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

Follower of Sesshū Tōyō, 1460s to 1550s

Download1752 × 3400 px View on a wall Edit

Artist: Sesshū Tōyō (Japanese)
Medium: Hanging scroll from a set of eight; ink and color on silk
Size: Painting: 143.6 x 72.7 cm (56 9/16 x 28 5/8 in.); Mounted: 251.1 x 90.3 cm (98 7/8 x 35 9/16 in.)
Museum: Cleveland Museum of Art
Rights: CC0 — no rights reserved

This painting and CMA 2015.590 belong to a group that was likely mounted as a pair of four-panel folding screens focusing on the Eight Views of Xiao-Xiang, a theme centered on an area in southern China. This one represents the motif “Returning Sails Off a Distant Shore.” Both emulate the style of Chinese painter Li Tang (about 1050–after 1130). Some scholars believe the paintings are the work of Sesshū Tōyō (1420–1506), the only Japanese painter of his day to have traveled to China.