Artwork Page for Fushan Monastery

Details / Information for Fushan Monastery

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

Fushan Monastery

福山院

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 1998.78.8
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 central hill topped with a walled building complex nestled beneath tall pine trees. Winding paths and scattered black dots texture the brown and green slopes. A thatched hut sits at the bottom left, while more houses cluster in the middle ground right. In the distance, a pale mountain rises. Columns of Chinese calligraphy and a red seal feature in the upper right corner.

Fushan Monastery

c. 1588

Song Xu

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

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