Eight Views of Xiao-Xiang (early-mid 1700s): Art, History and Details

Eight Views of Xiao-Xiang (early-mid 1700s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Watanabe Shikō (Japanese, 1683–1755).

The work and its context

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

Watanabe Shiko, an Edo period painter who combined Kano school style with Rimpa style, re-created the Xiao and the Xiang rivers on a pair of eight-panel screens. For this composition, he followed the Kano school’s sense of space, adapted from miniature copying paintings (shukuzu) by the Japanese artist Kano Tanyu. Watanabe revised the typical representations of the Xiao and the Xiang rivers by rendering the theme Wild Geese Descending to Sandbar on the right screen and Evening Bell from Mist-Shrouded Temple on the left screen. He depicted simple motifs—moon, boat, geese, and temple—to suggest the other scenes while also creating airy space.

Object facts

• Title: Eight Views of Xiao-Xiang
• Date: early-mid 1700s
• Creator attribution: Watanabe Shikō (Japanese, 1683–1755)
• Culture: Japan, Edo period (1615–1868)
• Type: Painting
• Technique: One of a pair of six-panel folding screens, ink on paper
• Dimensions: Painting: 150 x 356 cm (59 1/16 x 140 3/16 in.); Mounted: 170 x 376 cm (66 15/16 x 148 1/16 in.)
• Collection: ASIAN - Folding screen
• Department: Japanese Art
• Accession number: 1968.267

A detail from the museum

This screen forms a pair with CMA 1960.284.

Collection credit

Gift of N. V. Hammer

Further reading listed by the museum

• Sŏn, Sŭng-hye. The Lure of Painted Poetry: Japanese and Korean Art. Cleveland, OH: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2011.
• Cleveland Museum of Art, and Michael R. Cunningham. 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.