Artwork Page for Bilang Lake

Details / Information for Bilang Lake

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

Bilang Lake

碧浪湖

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 1998.78.17
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 horizontal landscape in muted tan and gray tones. Centrally, a multi-tiered pagoda rises from a rocky island surrounded by small boats. A steep mountain with textured ridges slopes upward on the left, while a low coastline sits on the horizon. Sparse trees anchor the bottom right corner. Chinese calligraphy and two red seals are featured in the upper right.

Bilang Lake

c. 1588

Song Xu

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

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