Gu Kaizhi is traditionally credited with painting the Chinese Admonitions Scroll.
The handscroll illustrates an instructional text by Zhang Hua, written in the Western Jin period. The text offers advice to a palace woman, while the painted scenes present moral examples and courtly behavior. Gu Kaizhi, a major Eastern Jin painter, is traditionally associated with the original fourth-century composition.
The surviving scroll is a later copy, generally dated to the Tang dynasty rather than Gu Kaizhi’s lifetime. It was once part of the imperial collection and is now in the British Museum. The object combines painting, calligraphy, and literary instruction in a format meant to be viewed section by section.
The attribution needs care: scholars distinguish between Gu Kaizhi’s celebrated original and the surviving copy. Thus, “painted by Gu Kaizhi” is the standard traditional attribution, not a claim that every surviving brushstroke is his.