Album of Seasonal Landscapes (1684): Art, History and Details

Album of Seasonal Landscapes (1684) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Zha Shibiao (Chinese, 1615–1698).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

Zha Shibiao, a native of Anhui province, moved to Yangzhou later in his career, like so many of his fellow countrymen. At age 68, he painted this album with seasonal landscapes in various styles. Painted in fresh colors and wet strokes, all depict typical scenes of Jiangnan, the Yangzi delta: a herdboy on a buffalo wading through water, boating on the stream to the Peach Blossom Spring at Wulin, a waterfront town shrouded in mist, a scholar on his donkey enjoying the red autumn leaves, and drinking tea on a boat while watching migrating birds.

Object facts

• Title: Album of Seasonal Landscapes
• Date: 1684
• Creator attribution: Zha Shibiao (Chinese, 1615–1698)
• Culture: China, Qing dynasty (1644-1911)
• Type: Painting
• Technique: Album of twelve leaves; ink or ink and light color on paper
• Dimensions: Overall: 29.9 x 39.4 cm (11 3/4 x 15 1/2 in.)
• Collection: ASIAN - Album leaf
• Department: Chinese Art
• Accession number: 1955.37

Collection credit

Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Severance A. Millikin

Further reading listed by the museum

• Lee, Sherman E. Chinese Landscape Painting. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1954.
• Sirén, Osvald. Chinese Painting: Leading Masters and Principles. New York: Ronald Press, 1956.
• The Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art Handbook. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1958.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.