Chinese Literatus in an Autumn Landscape (late 1400s): Art, History and Details

Chinese Literatus in an Autumn Landscape (late 1400s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Josui Sōen (Japanese, active c. 1489–1500).

The work and its context

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

In this painting, Sesshū Tōyō’s disciple Sōen depicts a Chinese scholar-official astride a donkey with his attendant behind. Framing their passage on the right side of the scene are two bare willows, and on the left, geese in flight, the cries of which capture the pair’s attention. These elements suggest that the season is late autumn. Sōen, who famously received Sesshū’s 1495 Splashed-ink Landscape as a certificate of his success as a pupil, studied with the master in Suō, presentday Yamaguchi, after which he returned to his native province in the Kanto region.

Object facts

• Title: Chinese Literatus in an Autumn Landscape
• Date: late 1400s
• Creator attribution: Josui Sōen (Japanese, active c. 1489–1500)
• Culture: Japan, Muromachi period (1392–1573)
• Type: Painting
• Technique: hanging scroll; ink on paper
• Dimensions: Mounted: 111 x 56.2 cm (43 11/16 x 22 1/8 in.)
• Collection: ASIAN - Hanging scroll
• Department: Japanese Art
• Accession number: 2015.467

Collection credit

Gift from the Collection of George Gund III

Further reading listed by the museum

• "Exhibitions.” Cleveland Art: Cleveland Museum of Art Members Magazine 57, no. 4 (July/August 2017): 4–5.

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.