Fisherman Preparing Food on the Riverbank

A lone fisherman--perhaps a scholar-recluse--crouches on the riverbank heating his meal on a glowing portable brazier. Behind, he has moored his boat under the leafless, winter branches of a tree hung with vines. The poet and scholar Yang Xunji (1458-1546), a native of Suzhou in Jiangsu Province, ostensibly inscribed the following verse on the painting:

Misty hills, misty trees, and ever boundless sands;
In the blue and green, vast and vague, where is home?
Only the old fisherman understands what I truly mean;
Water, sky, empty, wide, beside the blooming reeds.

(Translation by Stephen D. Allee)

The nine-character inscription at upper right records that the artist Lü Xue (late 17th-early 18th century) saw the painting in 1701. At lower left, the signature of the Southern Song dynasty painter Ma Kui (active 1180-1220) is spurious.