An Illustrated Marriage of Apparitions (mid-1800s): Art, History and Details

An Illustrated Marriage of Apparitions (mid-1800s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

The matchmaking, engagement, wedding, and birth of the first child of two apparitions, or bakemono, literally "things that change," are illustrated in this whimsical, humorous handscroll. Japanese folklore abounds with such strange creatures, most famously represented in handscrolls featuring a procession of 100 supernatural monsters. Aside from a textual preface and cartouches indicating the content of the scenes, the tale is told visually. The artist and whereabouts of the original handscroll are unknown, but a number of other 19th-century copies by amateur painters exist in Japanese collections, attesting to its broad appeal.

Object facts

• Title: An Illustrated Marriage of Apparitions
• Date: mid-1800s
• Culture: Japan, Edo period (1615–1868)
• Type: Painting
• Technique: handscroll; ink and color on paper
• Dimensions: Overall: 29.2 cm (11 1/2 in.); Painting only: 25.9 x 1310.6 cm (10 3/16 x 516 in.)
• Collection: ASIAN - Handscroll
• Department: Japanese Art
• Accession number: 1987.194

Collection credit

John L. Severance Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Turner, Evan H. “The Year in Review for 1987.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 75, no. 2 (February 1988): 30–71.

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.