Eight Songs of the Xiao and Xiang Rivers

Unidentified artist
After Wen Zhengming Chinese

Not on view

In the eleventh century, an artist named Song Di painted a set of melancholy landscapes evoking the river watersheds of the Xiao and Xiang region in current-day Hunan Province, southwest China. Poets of the day responded to Song’s paintings with corresponding poems, giving rise to a tradition of Xiao-Xiang poetry and painting that continued in subsequent centuries in China and eventually extended to Japan and Korea. This rendition bears a signature of the Ming-dynasty artist Wen Zhengming, but both the calligraphy and painting lack Wen’s subtlety; it is believed to have been painted in his style after his death.

Eight Songs of the Xiao and Xiang Rivers, Unidentified artist  , 16th or 17th century, Album of eight leaves; ink on paper, China

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