Cleveland Museum of Art

Boats at Anchor on West Lake at the City Gate

Date: 1150–1200
Medium: Album leaf; ink and color on silk
Culture: China, Southern Song dynasty (1127-1279)
Department: Chinese Art
Institution: Cleveland Museum of Art
Object ID: 149415

From the Cleveland Museum of Art record

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. 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.

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Provenance & credit

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Credit line: John L. Severance Fund
Provenance: ?–1978: (Kochukyo Company, Tokyo, Japan, sold to the Cleveland Museum of Art) | 1978–: The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH