Entertainment Scene (c. 1710–53): Art, History and Details

Entertainment Scene (c. 1710–53) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Miyagawa Chōshun (Japanese, 1683–1753).

The work and its context

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

This painting captures the moment when a high-ranking courtesan accompanied by two trainees makes her grand entrance into a salon. The guest of honor, a samurai who reclines beneath a striped robe while dangling his fan, turns from the musical entertainment to gaze at the spectacle of her arrival. The fortunes of everyone in the room depend on how she orchestrates the rest of the evening, as the more the samurai spends on her services, the more trickles down to the other entertainers who are present.

Object facts

• Title: Entertainment Scene
• Date: c. 1710–53
• Creator attribution: Miyagawa Chōshun (Japanese, 1683–1753)
• Culture: Japan, Edo period (1615–1868)
• Type: Painting
• Technique: hanging scroll; ink and color on silk
• Dimensions: Image: 56.4 x 135.5 cm (22 3/16 x 53 3/8 in.); Overall: 175 x 144.7 cm (68 7/8 x 56 15/16 in.); with knobs: 175 x 154.9 cm (68 7/8 x 61 in.)
• Collection: ASIAN - Hanging scroll
• Department: Japanese Art
• Accession number: 1985.17

Collection credit

Leonard C. Hanna Jr. Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Turner, Evan H. “The Year in Review for 1984.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 72, no. 2 (April 1985): 163–207.
• 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.
• Inagaki, Tomoko. "Miyagawa Choshun's Entertainment Scene and the Satsuma Clan Shimazu Family and the Ryukyus." Kokka 國華 no. 1394 (2011).

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.