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These landscape paintings reflect the style of the school of the influential court artist An Kyon (act. ca. 1440–70) in their dramatic brushwork and use of discrete landscape elements to define space. Depicted are two scenes from the Eight Views of the Xiao and Xiang Rivers, a Chinese pictorial and poetic theme that was popular in the Choson dynasty (1392–1910 AD). The theme celebrates the landscape of the Lake Dongting region, in the modern Chinese province of Hunan, into which the two rivers flow. The poems extol the region’s luxuriant beauty and romantic aura as a place of retreat and reclusion, aspects that are traditionally associated with the legend of Qu Yuan (343–278 BC), a statesman of ancient China who was banished to the south because of false accusations against him, and finally, in despair over his fate, drowned himself there.