Album of Seasonal Landscapes, Leaf H (previous leaf 8) (1668): Art, History and Details

Album of Seasonal Landscapes, Leaf H (previous leaf 8) (1668) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Xiao Yuncong (Chinese, 1596–1673).

The work and its context

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

Throughout his lifetime, Xiao Yuncong visited Nanjing and Yangzhou, cities embedded in the fertile and water-rich Jiangnan region, as reflected in his paintings. Xiao painted from nature, and his landscapes are informed by the seasons and his travels, as well as by his experience as a print designer. Xiao’s fresh, light colors continue to appear in later Shanghai school paintings. This album was formerly in the collection of Li Yufen in Yangzhou and then owned by Wu Hufan in Shanghai. While the artist impressed his seal consistently below his poetic inscriptions in the upper parts of the composition, the red seals on the margins and in the lower corners of the paintings are impressions by the album’s previous owners.

Object facts

• Title: Album of Seasonal Landscapes, Leaf H (previous leaf 8)
• Date: 1668
• Creator attribution: Xiao Yuncong (Chinese, 1596–1673)
• Culture: China, Qing dynasty (1644-1911)
• Type: Painting
• Technique: album leaf; ink and light color on paper
• Dimensions: Overall: 21 x 15.8 cm (8 1/4 x 6 1/4 in.)
• Collection: ASIAN - Album leaf
• Department: Chinese Art
• Accession number: 1955.302.8

A detail from the museum

The hardy white prunus blossoms in the poetic inscription and the painting itself identify this as a late winter scene.

Collection credit

John L. Severance Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Lee, Sherman E. “An Album of Landscapes by Hsiao Yün-Ts'ung.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art, vol. 44, no. 6, 1957, pp. 121–125.
• The Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art Handbook. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1958.
• Lee, Sherman E. Chinese Landscape Painting. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1962.

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.