Returning Sails off a Distant Shores, from Eight Views of Xiao-Xiang

Tani Bunchō (Japanese, 1763–1841)

1788

Medium
album leaf remounted as a hanging scroll; ink and color on paper
Classification
Painting
Dimensions
Image: 29.5 x 49 cm (11 5/8 x 19 5/16 in.); Overall: 129 x 67 cm (50 13/16 x 26 3/8 in.)
Culture
Japan, Edo period (1615–1868)
Museum
Cleveland Museum of Art, Japanese Art
Credit line
Andrew R. and Martha Holden Jennings Fund
Rights
Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
Who can see it
Little Ones profiles and older: it shows gentle subjects for the very young. How works are placed

View at the Cleveland Museum of Art

About this work

This painting was 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.