Eighteen Views of Huzhou
1588
unspecified
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
About the artist
1588
unspecified
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
Dominant colour
Eighteen Views of Huzhou is a 1588 unspecified by Song Xu, a Ming Painting work, depicting Wanli Reign, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
This album shows eighteen small scenes of lakes, bridges, and hills around Huzhou. Each leaf is the size of a postcard. In the late 1500s, scholars and travelers carried printed guidebooks with woodcut views of famous spots. Song Xu turned those flat prints into painted versions—soft ink washes instead of sharp black lines. The tiny inscriptions match old local guidebooks word for word. To see how ink washes can turn a map into a mood, look up the subject “china, ming dynasty (1368–1644), wanli reign (1573–1620).”
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…
Song Xu favored a painting style that was technically polished and focused attention on specific, realistic details.
Read the full account in the museum source.
