Yen Tz'u-'ing was the son of the painter Yen Chung. In the Lung-hsing era (1163-1164), he presented a painting to the emperor and was rewarded with an appointment in the Imperial Painting Academy. Yen was noted for his renditions of landscapes, figures and oxen, his style emulating though not surpassing that of Li T'ang (ca. 1049-after 1130).This work, the sixth from the album Ming-hui chi-chen, was executed in the shape of a circular fan. The scene depicts a rocky promontory out in a lake, where a villa stands surrounded on all sides by pines and bamboo. On the right side of the composition, one may observe the artist's signature in standard script on a rock. The composition is in an asymmetrical format often found in the Southern Sung, in which solids and voids are often juxtaposed. Here, the concrete reality of the villa and trees is contrasted effectively with the void or vastness of the water and sky, thereby achieving the appearance of great distance within a limited space.