Learning to paint: A family affair

Zhao Mengfu probably would have agreed. "Instead of going to the stables to look at horses, Zhao and his son and grandson were thinking about old horse-paintings from the Tang Dynasty which, thanks to the flourishing Silk Road trade, was seeing a steady arrival of sturdy steeds from Central Asia," says Scheier-Dolberg. "That explains the grooms' big bears and distinct facial features."

With what a later colophon-writer described as "manes like dark jade" and "four snowy hoofs" that had allowed it to travel the long distance to be "paraded in the emperor's stable", Zhao Mengfu's horse is a symbol of art-historicism. But more than that, in an ancient China where little possibility for personal advancement existed outside of the world of officialdom, the horses — "extraordinary creatures with leisurely manners" to quote from the same colophon — conveyed an urgent longing of the society's educated members. They, too, wanted to be in "the emperor's stable".

"To avail oneself of the chance to serve the emperor and by extension the populace under his rule, that was considered noble. And that might explain Zhao Mengfu's thinking behind his active participation in the Yuan government," says Wang Yimin.