By contrast, virtually every work in "The Artful Recluse: Painting, Poetry, and Politics in Seventeenth Century China" warrants its own essay on the composition's literary or political allusions, the lineage of its brushwork, and the personal and historical context in which the painter dipped brush into ink.
As a result, it takes Rohmer a long time to reunite the original pair, but from love delayed, he asserts, music, painting, poetry, architecture, and religion are born.