锦上添花Flowers on Brocade

Peonies hang down from the top of the scroll, mostly pink with a few blossoms of saturated red, arranged in clear layers. Below, a male golden pheasant stands on a sloping bank, his golden crest, red breast and long golden-brown tail stretched across the paper, every feather drawn with patient care; the female keeps close beside him, head lowered. The bank is lightly rubbed in with pale ink and ochre, and at the lower right a blue-green rock dotted with dark moss sends up a few long blades of grass.

The inscription records that the work was painted beside West Lake in Hangzhou in an autumn month of the jiachen year. The pheasant’s plumage is as fine as brocade, and with the peonies it gives the title its idiom, adding flowers to brocade: one beautiful thing laid upon another.

牡丹自画幅上方垂枝而下，以粉红为主，间以浓艳大红数朵，层次井然。画幅下部，雄锦鸡立于坡石之上，金冠朱胸，金褐长尾横贯画面，翎毛刻画一丝不苟；雌鸡低首相伴，依依其侧。坡石以淡墨赭石轻擦而成，右下青石一方，苔点浓重，旁出细草数茎。

款识自记作于“甲辰秋月于杭州西子湖畔”。锦鸡羽色如锦，复配以牡丹，正合“锦上添花”之意，喻美好之上更添美好。