Artwork Page for Xianding (Immortal's Peak)

Details / Information for Xianding (Immortal's Peak)

Series Title: Eighteen Views of Huzhou, 湖州十八景圖

Xianding (Immortal's Peak)

仙頂

c. 1588

Song Xu 宋旭

(Chinese, 1525-c. 1606)
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Culture
China, Jiaxing, Ming dynasty (1368–1644)
Medium
Album leaf; ink and color on silk
Measurements
Sheet: 26.4 x 28.4 cm (10 3/8 x 11 3/16 in.)
Credit Line
The Severance and Greta Millikin Purchase Fund 1998.78.12
Public Domain
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Location
Not on view
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Description

By the 1500s, visits to historic and scenic sites in the lower Yangzi delta stimulated an increase of printed illustrated travel books. Topographical depictions of local scenery flourished.

Leaves from this album illustrates sites around Lake Tai of the two adjacent counties Changxing and Wuxing (modern Huzhou). Song Xu, who lived intermittently in Jiaxing and Songjiang, must have passed through Wuxing by boat and thus knew the region.

The paintings are inscribed with gazetteerlike notations, suggesting that the album was produced for clients as commemorative works, a travel guide, or for “armchair travel” (woyou) in one’s mind.
An ink and color painting on silk depicts a mountain landscape with textured rock faces and spindly pines. On the left, a craggy peak rises, while a steep slope to the right features a multistory building. A winding path meanders through a central valley toward hazy blue peaks. Two tiny figures stand near houses in the lower center. Chinese calligraphy and a red seal feature in the upper left corner.

Xianding (Immortal's Peak)

c. 1588

Song Xu

(Chinese, 1525-c. 1606)
China, Jiaxing, Ming dynasty (1368–1644)

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