Objects in Focus - The Admonitions Scroll by Jan Stuart

The Admonitions scroll is an internationally recognized masterpiece of narrative painting and is arguably the earliest surviving Chinese painting. Painted in ink and colour on silk and traditionally attributed to the founding figure of Chinese painting, Gu Kaizhi -c.345-c.406-, the scroll entered the British Museum in 1903 and has become one of its most famous objects. The scroll illustrates a poem written in AD 292 by the poet-official Zhang Hua -232-300-, who was reprimanding Empress Jia -257-300- who had wantonly abandoned the Confucian-based ethical behaviour expected of court ladies.