Album leaf

For this leaf, the artist shows a boat just as its oarsman poles it into view. An old gentleman sits in the prow, gazing into the distance. His hat is of a kind associated with Su Shi, a renowned Northern Song poet and statesman and also a popular theme of Chinese painting, but it would probably be a mistake to think that the leaf illustrates any particular poem by the poet. Rather, the Su Shi reference turns the passenger into an emblem of poetic sensibility. It is a painting of so-called yuyin (“reclusion in a fishing boat”), a theme concerning eremitism rather than fishing. Those seen on boats are not fishermen but scholar-recluses who are escaping an official career, fame and other social burdens.