Landscape of a Monastery in the Mountains

This vertical image depicts several figures waiting on the shore in the middle ground, while a boat appears in the distance with a boatman rowing a passenger and a mule. In the foreground, a monk makes his laborious way up the steps to the monastery, carrying the bucket of water that he has collected at the bottom of the hill. The inscription implies that the visiting friends did not get a chance to meet the hermit in the mountain temple, possibly referring to the painting’s recipient, the monk artist Xugu (1823–1896).
 

The details of the artist’s biography are sketchy, but we know that Hu Zhang was a close friend of Xugu, a leader of the Shanghai school artists of the time. For much of his career, Hu lived in Suzhou and visited Shanghai frequently, and his painting style and expressive brushwork reflect the influence of other peer artists in this flourishing port city. Hu traveled to Japan in 1879 and many of his surviving works were painted during his sojourn there. In 1896, the same year as Xugu’s death, Hu Zhang returned to Japan for the second and final time. He died in Kobe in 1899.