Boats at Anchor on West Lake at the City Gate (1150–1200): Art, History and Details

Boats at Anchor on West Lake at the City Gate (1150–1200) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

Highlighted with a few bright accents, this fan painting conveys a nightly atmosphere with boats anchoring on West Lake at the foot of the city walls. Willow trees line the embankment, and the moon appears above the mountains. While the city is asleep, a figure wearing red inside a boat holds what appears to be a pipa (plucked stringed instrument), while a blue-robed gentleman nearby gazes toward the sound of music, evoking an association with Song of the Lute (Pipa xing) by Tang poet Bai Juyi (772–846) which tells the story of a romantic encounter on the Yangzi River.

Object facts

• Title: Boats at Anchor on West Lake at the City Gate
• Date: 1150–1200
• Culture: China, Southern Song dynasty (1127-1279)
• Type: Painting
• Technique: Album leaf; ink and color on silk
• Dimensions: Image: 25.3 x 19.2 cm (9 15/16 x 7 9/16 in.); with mat: 33.3 x 40.5 cm (13 1/8 x 15 15/16 in.)
• Collection: ASIAN - Album leaf
• Department: Chinese Art
• Accession number: 1978.68

A detail from the museum

The depiction of the female figure playing the pipa and the scholarly male evokes an association with a romantic encounter narrated in a well-known Tang dynasty poem.

Collection credit

John L. Severance Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Tō Sō Gen Min meigaten-gō [唐宋元明名画展号]. Tōkyō: Tōkyō Asahi Shinbun Hakkōjo, 1928.
• Harada, Yoshito 原田淑人 and Kazuchika Komai 駒井和愛. Shina koki zukō 支那古器圖攷. Tōkyō: Tōhō Bunka Gakuin Tōkyō Kenkyūjo, Shōwa 7 [1932].
• Harada, Kinjirō 原田謹次郎. Shina meiga hōkan [支那名畫寶鑒 = The pageant of Chinese painting]. Tōkyō: Ōtsuka Kōgeisha, 1936.

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.