Farming and Herding Buffalo in Summer (mid- to late 1500s): Art, History and Details

Farming and Herding Buffalo in Summer (mid- to late 1500s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Kano Hideyori (Japanese, active mid- to late 1500s).

The work and its context

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

Hideyori is most famous as the painter of a very early pair of genre screen paintings depicting people enjoying autumn foliage at a shrine-temple complex in Mount Takao near Kyoto. In this scene, people are hard at work farming their fields and herding water buffalo in summer. Such scenes were often associated with promoting the ideal of a prosperous realm, and also with the activities of the 12 months. Historical sources are divided on the biography of painter Kano Hideyori, but many scholars now believe he was the second son of Kano Motonobu, head of the Kyoto-based Kano family atelier.

Object facts

• Title: Farming and Herding Buffalo in Summer
• Date: mid- to late 1500s
• Creator attribution: Kano Hideyori (Japanese, active mid- to late 1500s)
• Culture: Japan, Muromachi period (1392–1573) to Momoyama period (1573–1615)
• Type: Painting
• Technique: hanging scroll; ink and light color on paper
• Dimensions: Mounted: 137.5 x 47.3 cm (54 1/8 x 18 5/8 in.)
• Collection: ASIAN - Hanging scroll
• Department: Japanese Art
• Accession number: 2015.594

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.