Chinese Landscape (1500s): Art, History and Details

Chinese Landscape (1500s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

In a panorama of mountains and expanses of water, three gentlemen have assembled by moonlight to enjoy one another’s company away from a bustling village. An influx of ink paintings from China in both album and scroll formats beginning in the late 1200s inspired Japanese artists to create landscapes based upon Chinese prototypes. Later, Japanese painters adapted the imagery to the larger format of folding screens, which were used to define spaces in large rooms.

Object facts

• Title: Chinese Landscape
• Date: 1500s
• Culture: Japan, Muromachi period (1392–1573)
• Type: Painting
• Technique: Pair of six-fold screens; ink and slight color on paper
• Dimensions: Image: 155.5 x 357.8 cm (61 1/4 x 140 7/8 in.); Overall: 171.5 x 373.4 cm (67 1/2 x 147 in.)
• Collection: ASIAN - Folding screen
• Department: Japanese Art
• Accession number: 1964.279

Collection credit

Severance and Greta Millikin Collection

Further reading listed by the museum

• Tōyō kaiga no seika: tokubetsuten: Kurīvurando Bijutsukan no korekushon kara [東洋絵画の精華: 特别展: クリーヴラント美術館のコレクションから= Highlights of Asian painting from the Cleveland Museum of Art]. Nara, Japan: Nara National Museum, 1998.
• Cunningham, Michael R. Unfolding Beauty: Japanese Screens from the Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland, OH: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2001.

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.