The Cleveland Museum of Art

Collection Online as of October 4, 2024

Bilang Lake

Bilang Lake

c. 1588
Location: not on view

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.
  • ?–1998
    (Kaikodo America Inc., New York, NY, sold to the Cleveland Museum of Art)
    1998–
    The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH
  • Chou, Ju-hsi and Anita Chung. Silent poetry: Chinese paintings from the collection of the Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 2015. Reproduced: pp. 287-295
  • China's Southern Paradise: Treasures from the Lower Yangzi Delta. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (September 10, 2023-January 7, 2024).
    Main Asian Gallery Rotation (Gallery 122). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (July 23-October 27, 2003).
  • {{cite web|title=Bilang Lake|url=false|author=Song Xu|year=c. 1588|access-date=04 October 2024|publisher=Cleveland Museum of Art}}

Source URL:

https://www.clevelandart.org/art/1998.78.17