Cucumber and Eggplants (1500s): Art, History and Details

Cucumber and Eggplants (1500s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Yamada Dōan (Japanese, d. 1571).

The work and its context

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

Still lifes appear frequently in Western painting. This is not the case in East Asian painting traditions. Nevertheless, Zen monastic communities in medieval Japan did like the subject because its outward, "simple" appearance camouflaged the skills required to portray the subject convincingly.

Object facts

• Title: Cucumber and Eggplants
• Date: 1500s
• Creator attribution: Yamada Dōan (Japanese, d. 1571)
• Culture: Japan, Muromachi period (1392–1573)
• Type: Painting
• Technique: hanging scroll; ink on paper
• Dimensions: Painting: 28 x 44 cm (11 x 17 5/16 in.); Mounted: 114.9 x 63.5 cm (45 1/4 x 25 in.)
• Collection: ASIAN - Hanging scroll
• Department: Japanese Art
• Accession number: 1982.11

Collection credit

John L. Severance Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Lee, Sherman E. “Year in Review for 1982.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 70, no. 1 (January 1983): 3–55.

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.