Four Motifs from the Eight Views of Xiao-Xiang (1788): Art, History and Details

Four Motifs from the Eight Views of Xiao-Xiang (1788) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Tani Bunchō (Japanese, 1763–1841).

The work and its context

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

These paintings were part of a set of album leaves representing the Eight Views of Xiao-Xiang, a theme originating in Chinese poetry and painting that spread to both Korea and Japan. Southern China’s Xiao-Xiang area, where the mist-covered banks of the Xiang River created a complex landscape shifting like the moods and minds of people, captured the imaginations of generations of painters and calligraphers. Inscriptions on these works suggest that they were possibly ordered by newly prominent Japanese Confucian scholars.

Object facts

• Title: Four Motifs from the Eight Views of Xiao-Xiang
• Date: 1788
• Creator attribution: Tani Bunchō (Japanese, 1763–1841)
• Culture: Japan, Edo period (1615–1868)
• Type: Painting
• Technique: Four album leaves from a set of eight remounted as hanging scrolls; ink and color on paper
• Dimensions: Each painting: 29.5 x 49 cm (11 5/8 x 19 5/16 in.); Each mounted: 129 x 67 cm (50 13/16 x 26 3/8 in.)
• Collection: ASIAN - Hanging scroll
• Department: Japanese Art
• Accession number: 1980.188

Collection credit

Andrew R. and Martha Holden Jennings Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Lee, Sherman E. “The Year in Review for 1980.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 68, no. 6 (June 1981): 163–219.
• Chance, Frank L. “Tani Bunchō’s Eight Views of Xiao and Xiang: Origins, Ideas, Implications.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 76, no. 8 (October 1989): 266–279.
• Sun, Seunghye. "The Lure of Painted Poetry." Cleveland Art: Cleveland Museum of Art Members Magazine 51, no. 2 (March/April 2011): 4-5.

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.