Boys Playing with Crickets

Du Heng is a Suzhou native who lived in Guangzhou region and is good at figure paintings and life sketches. He often imitated the figure style of Tang Bohu, a famous Ming artist living in Suzhou, and probably created this lovely scene for the market. This painting was on display last year, and the audience liked Du’s artistic rendering of the children that kept the lively atmosphere of a leisure moment in the summertime. It is important to add this example to showcase the artistic taste and painting market of Canton in the early modern era (from the late Qing to the Republic of China period).

This charming depiction of a popular game is full of movement, color, and playful details. The game is played by two competing teams, each consisting of a boy and his cricket. The person whose cricket subdues his rival is the winner, having demonstrated stronger strategic skills. In this picture, two boys squatting in a plantain-and-rock garden concentrate on a clay basin, a common container for insects. One boy pokes inside the bowl with a freshly broken branch, while the other takes up the challenge by dropping a wide brush toward the battleground. Walking toward them is another competitor holding a tray with a covered basin, as if preventing his cricket from jumping out of the ring before the fight.

The boys’ bald heads with top knots, loosely embroidered jackets, and red shoes are all examples of Ming-dynasty fashion. The painting’s lifelike vitality and charming subjects pull viewers into the scene. For this work, the Guangdong-based Du Heng adopted, as an early model, the work of the figure painter Tang Yin (1470–1523).