Elegant Gathering in the Western Garden,

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According to legend, in 1088 a group of sixteen famous statesmen, literati, and artists gathered in the Western Garden of Wang Shen, an imperial son-in-law. The scholar and artist Mi Fu (1052–1107) purportedly wrote an account commemorating the occasion, and Li Gonglin (d. 1106) is said to have painted a scene of the gathering. Regardless of whether this event indeed took place, it entered the cultural imagination and became both a model for later literary gatherings and a theme in painting. Here, the scholar Su Shi is seated at one table practicing calligraphy while Wang Shen and others look on. At another table, Li Gonglin paints a scene taken from literature. Behind them, Mi Fu stands with a brush in hand, inscribing a stone face, and across a bridge a Buddhist sits in a bamboo grove engaged in a discussion on Nirvana.