Horseback Riding at West Lake

This handscroll by the naturalist painter Maruyama Ōkyo depicts figures on horseback along the banks of storied West Lake, near the Chinese city of Hangzhou. At the very end of the scroll, Ōkyo dates his painting to the spring of 1793 and notes that it is modeled after the work of the sixteenth-century Chinese painter Qiu Ying (1494–1552). Although horseback riding at West Lake is not a subject Qiu Ying is known to have painted, the distinct depiction of willow trees here is consistent with works associated with the painter in Japan.