Described by the eminent English poet, dramatist and art historian Laurence Binyon as one of the finest examples of Chinese painting in the former Eumorfopoulos collection, this intruging picture is a reverse image, with minor compositional differences, of the last section of the "Nine Horses", a handscroll by Ren Renfa (1255-1327) in the collection of Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. Compared with the fine craftsmanship of the Nelson-Atkins' piece, the painter of the V&A scroll is discernably less successful. Spuriously signed as by Ren Renfa on the left, it is also clear that the scroll was used to deceive at some point in its history. Neverthelsss, the painting itself is interesting because it not only links to the Nelson-Atkins' scroll, it is also closely related to a wood-block print in Master Gu's Picture Album (1603). Indeed the print is almost identical. Despite the mistaken claim that the print was the reproduction of a work by another Yuan horse painting specialist Zhao Yong (1289-1362), it seems plausible that the V&A scroll is the original on which the print was based. Both Nelson-Atkins and the V&A's scrolls found their way to Japan before entering the Western collections. In Japan, Nelson-Atkins' scroll was so admired by the Kano School painters that three members made a precise copy, one section each. Kin Juro copied the opening; Hashimoto Eiki (d. 1794) the second section; and Yamamoto Ikyu, the third. These copies are now in the Tokyo National Museum's collection.

Literature: Laurence Binyon, The George Eumorfopoulos Collections: Catalogue of Chinese, Corean and Siamese Paintings, London 1928, pl. 30; Wai-kam Ho et al, Eight Dynasties of Chinese Painting: The Collections of the Nelson-Atkins Museum, Kansas City, and the Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland 1980, pl. 95; Craig Clunas, Art in China, Oxford 1997, fig. 98.