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

Xiaomei

小梅

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 1998.78.18
Public Domain
You can copy, modify, and distribute this work, all without asking permission. Learn more about CMA's Open Access Initiative.
Location
Not on view
Print

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.
A painting on silk depicts a steep tan cliff textured with dark dashes and topped with green pines and reddish trees. A stone arch bridge spans a waterway leading toward a village and clusters of wispy willow trees. Loosely suggested boats drift across a pale, expansive body of water toward a high horizon. In the lower left, dark calligraphy and two red seals mark the cliff's base, balancing the composition against the vast, open sea.

Xiaomei

c. 1588

Song Xu

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

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