Collection Online as of December 1, 2023
Eighteen Views of Huzhou
湖州十八景圖
Bilang Lake
碧浪湖
Part of a set. See all set records
Song Xu 宋旭
(Chinese, 1525-c. 1606)
(1368–1644)
Album leaf; ink and color on silk
Sheet: 26.4 x 28.4 cm (10 3/8 x 11 3/16 in.)
The Severance and Greta Millikin Purchase Fund 1998.78.17
Location
003 Special Exhibition Hall
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.
Song Xu
Song Xu (宋旭, 1525–c. 1606), was a versatile Chinese painter active in northern Zhejiang and Jiangsu provinces. He was skilled in landscapes, boundary paintings (界畫, paintings of architecture), figure painting, and Buddhist painting. Although born a commoner, he also cultivated the literati arts of poetry and calligraphy. He studied Chan Buddhism and eventually became a Buddhist priest himself.