Baoyang Lake (c. 1588): Art, History and Details

Baoyang Lake (c. 1588) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Song Xu (Chinese, 1525-c. 1606).

The work and its context

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

This album of landscape paintings depicts the famous scenic areas located in and around the city of Wuxing in southeastern China. These places were all known for their natural beauty, but in addition, a number were distinguished by their links to eminent historical figures and events. The artist, Song Xu, was not a native of Wuxing, but must have visited it when he accepted the commission, for he carefully depicted all eighteen views and wrote comments on each of them. Song's gazetteer-like notation on this leaf reads: Baoyang Lake: Several li (Chinese mile) from here to the east, one can exit through Lake Tai, which is quite near. Just a few li to the north is the township of Xiangshan. Having arrived there, one may want to cross over the border to the city of Yixing.

Object facts

• Title: Baoyang Lake
• Date: c. 1588
• Creator attribution: Song Xu (Chinese, 1525-c. 1606)
• Culture: China, Jiaxing, Ming dynasty (1368–1644)
• Type: Painting
• Technique: Album leaf; ink and color on silk
• Dimensions: Sheet: 26.4 x 28.4 cm (10 3/8 x 11 3/16 in.)
• Collection: ASIAN - Album leaf
• Department: Chinese Art
• Accession number: 1998.78.14

Collection credit

The Severance and Greta Millikin Purchase Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• 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.
• von Spee, Clarissa. "China's Southern Paradise: Treasures From the Lower Yangzi Delta At the Cleveland Museum of Art." Arts of Asia (Winter 2023): 98-104.

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.