Poet Fisherman

This album leaf depicts the 8th-century Chinese official and Daoist scholar Zhang Zhihe sitting on a raft buffeted by waves. He drinks wine from a small cup, and gazes up at a crane flying above him. Behind him are two large jars, one covered with an overturned lotus leaf. The handle of a ladle emerges from the other. His fishing rod is balanced at his side, but its line is twisted uselessly. Based on its iconography, the painting is likely modeled after an image from an illustrated woodblock edition of the Chinese text Liexian Zuan (Biographies of Exemplary Immortals).