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

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.