Illumination in a Thatched HutSun K’o-hung (1532-1610)Ming Dynasty Sun K’o-hung (style name Yun-chih; sobriquet Hsueh-chu), a native of Sungkiang, served for a time as an official in Ying-t’ien-fu and later as Prefect of Han-yang, but lost interest in politics and returned in retirement to his home, where he occupied himself collecting paintings, calligraphy, curios, and antiquities. He excelled at painting flowers and plants from life; he also depicted plum blossoms and bamboo, the latter sometimes in vermilion ink. His landscapes were influenced by the Sung (960-1279) painters Mi Fu and Ma Yuan.. This scroll depicts twenty scenes of a scholar’s daily life which reveals the elegant life style of the late Ming literatus.