Public collection via the Cleveland Museum of Art
AT-00010108Bilang Lake
by Song Xu
Also known as: Eighteen Views of Wuxing: Green-wave Lake; Eighteen Views of Wuxing: Bilang Lake (Lake of Green Waves) 碧浪湖; Eighteen Views of Wuxing: Bilang Lake (Lake of Green Waves)
About the Artwork
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.
Provenance
?–1998: (Kaikodo America Inc., New York, NY, sold to the Cleveland Museum of Art) 1998–: The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH
Exhibition history
China’s Southern Paradise: Treasures from the Lower Yangzi Delta. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (September 10, 2023-January 7, 2024).
Data retrieved from the Cleveland Museum of Art on October 8, 2026. The museum may have updated its record since.
Quick Overview
- Artist
- Song Xu (Chinese, 1525-c. 1606)
- Date
- c. 1588
- Medium
- Album leaf; ink and color on silk
- Dimensions
- Sheet: 26.4 x 28.4 cm (10 3/8 x 11 3/16 in.)
- Type
- Painting
- Classification
- Painting
- Department
- Chinese Art
- Credit line
- The Severance and Greta Millikin Purchase Fund
- Accession no.
- 1998.78.17
More by Song Xu in museum collections
Open-access museum record · AT-00010108
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