Chinese Literatus Traveling to a Mountain Temple (late 1500s): Art, History and Details

Chinese Literatus Traveling to a Mountain Temple (late 1500s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Kano Hidemasa (Japanese, active late 1500s).

The work and its context

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

This painting bears the seal of Kano Hidemasa, believed to be the son of Kano Hideyori (active mid- to late 1500s) of the important and prolific Kano family of painters. It features a traveler and his servant in a Chinese setting. The two are on their way to a temple up the stairs, climbing the steep slope of the mountain ahead of them. The traveler, who wears clerical garb, has paused to admire and listen to the sound of a nearby waterfall. The painting is a charming interpretation of a scene that might be found in Song dynasty album leaves imported to Japan.

Object facts

• Title: Chinese Literatus Traveling to a Mountain Temple
• Date: late 1500s
• Creator attribution: Kano Hidemasa (Japanese, active late 1500s)
• Culture: Japan, Muromachi period (1392–1573)
• Type: Painting
• Technique: hanging scroll; ink and light color on paper
• Collection: ASIAN - Hanging scroll
• Department: Japanese Art
• Accession number: 2015.480

Collection credit

Gift from the Collection of George Gund III

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.