Artwork Page for Mt. Changchao

Details / Information for Mt. Changchao

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

Mt. Changchao

長超山

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 1998.78.16
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 on silk album leaf depicts a landscape with a tan mountain rising to our left, dotted with spindly pine trees. Orange-roofed buildings cluster at the mountain's base. Center right, a wide gray-green river flows past a second peak, where a small boat carries several figures. Vertical columns of Chinese calligraphy and a red seal mark the upper right corner, while distant islands and pale washes suggest a receding horizon.

Mt. Changchao

c. 1588

Song Xu

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

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