Landscape

This composition includes imagery from the Eight Views of the Xiao and Xiang Rivers. Scanning the composition from top to bottom, at least six of the views are discernible: night rain over Xiao and Xiang, evening bell from a mist-shrouded temple, returning sails off a distant shore, geese descending to a sandbar, mountain village in clearing mist, and sunset glow over a fishing village. Inside the painting’s box is a document with a long inscription by prominent calligrapher, collector, and connoisseur Maeda Kōsetsu (1841–1916) discussing the painting’s subject and the matter of the painter’s biography—he appears to have been a Kano school artist, but his precise identity is unclear.