Pigeon on a Peach Branch(桃鳩圖,桃鳩図 [ja]), (Emperor Huizong) ink and color on silk hanging
But who cares if the moral lesson of the work is too subtle for us? Not only is it a lovely painting with all the strength of Song dynasty art, the painter was remarkable in his own right. Zhao Ji was born into the greatest luxury imaginable and spent the first half of his life becoming one of China’s greatest literati painters. Unfortunately, his brother, Emperor Zhezong, the 7th emperor of the Song Dynasty, died without a son, and Zhao Ji was forced to take on the quotidian responsibilities of running China in a addition to his cultural and calligraphic practice (and working on his exquisite paintings). Zhao Ji ascended to the throne in 1100 as Emperor Huizong of Song, and although he is fondly remembered as one of China’s greatest painters, he was also one of China’s worst emperors. After abdicating in favor of his son, he was captured by Jurchens in 1126 and became a sad pawn of the duplicitous Jin Empire (a foreign “counter empire” based in the north which opposed the Song and set up the conditions for the Mongol conquest of a broken China.
The lesson here could that having a person who should be doing something else run your enormous empire is a big mistake…or maybe that dividing your country into two battling states sets a nation up for disaster, however I choose to read Emperor Huizong’s story as an artist’s tale of great success at bird flower painting.
ferrebeekeeper 
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December 17, 2019 at 6:34 AM
K Hindall
Uh . . . peaches famously blossom in the spring, being one of the blossoms associated with that time (at least in East Asia). So it would be winter turning into spring, not vice versa. Still a little cold (hence the pigeon has fluffed its feathers), but definitely spring. (Sorry to correct, but peach blossoms are a particular favorite of mine, which is why my dog is named Momo [“peach” in Japanese].)
I don’t know what pigeons symbolize in China and China-influenced cultures. Given that the pigeon is fluffed up, maybe this particular painting means that you have to endure a bit of suffering (the cold of an early spring day) to have joy in the future (although since the peach is blossoming, that future isn’t very far off). That’s my best guess at a moral lesson, anyway.
Thanks for the post, though! I didn’t know about that particular emperor.
December 17, 2019 at 12:41 PM
Wayne
Sorry: I wrote this in the middle of the night and undoubtedly the cold murky gloom of the dying year caused to reverse the seasonal order in this ridiculous fashion. Nowhere does spring turn into winter (at least not yet…who knows what horrors global climate change is likely to wreak?). I fixed the text above. Thanks for the tip and thanks for your interpretation of Huizong’s painting.
December 17, 2019 at 2:38 PM
K Hindall
And I wrote my comment in the early not-yet-light morning (gotta feed the dogs at 6 am or else!) and failed to realize that, regardless of when peaches bloom and what they symbolize in any culture, spring *never* turns into winter! At least, as you say, not yet . . .