A Rishi Stirring Up a Storm (1897): Art, History and Details

A Rishi Stirring Up a Storm (1897) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is John La Farge (American, 1835–1910).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

In the late 19th century, John La Farge was one of the first American artists to take a serious interest in Japanese art. This watercolor was produced after La Farge visited Japan in 1886, where he studied Daoism and painting with the writer Okakura Kakuzō (1862–1913). Here, he employed Western modeling and depth, building the water’s mass through transparent washes of light and dark blue, but also simulated the asymmetrical composition, lyrical tone, and bright blue color palette of contemporary Japanese woodblock prints. Hinting at the relationship between humans and the natural world, the ocean’s tempestuous curls echo the swirls of dense gouache in the imaginary figure’s robes, merging the figure of the “rishi” with the surging waters behind him. According to the artist's writings, “rishi” designates a powerful being who has reached immortality by following Daoist teachings. However, it is possible that La Farge misunderstood the term rishi: Resshi—the Japanese pronunciation of Liezi (列子), is a legendary Daoist philosopher who could ride the wind.

Object facts

• Title: A Rishi Stirring Up a Storm
• Date: 1897
• Creator attribution: John La Farge (American, 1835–1910)
• Culture: America
• Type: Drawing
• Technique: watercolor and gouache over graphite
• Dimensions: Sheet: 27.3 x 38.9 cm (10 3/4 x 15 5/16 in.); Image: 25 x 33.7 cm (9 13/16 x 13 1/4 in.); Secondary Support: 28 x 40.8 cm (11 x 16 1/16 in.)
• Collection: DR - American 19th Century
• Department: Drawings
• Accession number: 1939.267

A detail from the museum

The spots of paint on the bottom left corner of this sheet show where the artist tested colors before applying them to his composition.

Collection credit

Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Doll and Richards Gallery. Exhibition and Private Sale of Paintings in Water Color Chiefly from South Sea Islands and Japan by Mr. John La Farge. Boston: Doll and Richards Gallery, 1898.
• Metropolitan Museum of Art, Herbert E. Winlock, and Royal Cortissoz. An Exhibition of the Work of John La Farge, New York, March 23 to April 26, 1936. New York: Blanchard Press and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1936.
• United States. Review of Withheld Reimbursements of Rights-of-Way Costs of the Federal-Aid Highway Program; Report to the Congress of the United States [on the] District of Columbia Government. 1967.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.