Flowers and Birds in a Spring Landscape (1500s): Art, History and Details

Flowers and Birds in a Spring Landscape (1500s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Kano Motonobu (Japanese, c. 1476–1559).

The work and its context

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

These four paintings originally decorated sliding doors that partitioned the interiors of Japanese buildings. Painters from the Kano school, named after the artist Kano Motonobu (1476–1559), were major forces in the production of screens and architectural interiors in Kyoto. When he headed the workshop, his work was prized by the upper strata of society. Kano is credited with combining the subtlety of Chinese black ink painting, as seen in the rocks and hills, with the color and realism of Japanese painting, seen in the birds and flowers. Landscape scenes like this were prized by the elite of Kyoto, both for their contemplative aesthetic and their patrons’ refined taste.

Object facts

• Title: Flowers and Birds in a Spring Landscape
• Date: 1500s
• Creator attribution: Kano Motonobu (Japanese, c. 1476–1559)
• Culture: Japan, Muromachi period (1392–1573)
• Type: Painting
• Technique: One of a set of sliding door panels mounted as hanging scrolls; ink and color on paper
• Dimensions: Painting only: 177.1 x 137.1 cm (69 3/4 x 54 in.); Including mounting: 259.1 x 151.1 cm (102 x 59 1/2 in.)
• Collection: ASIAN - Hanging scroll
• Department: Japanese Art
• Accession number: 1970.6.1

Collection credit

Leonard C. Hanna Jr. Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• "New Oriental art galleries at Cleveland." Apollo: A Journal of the Arts. August 1970, Vol. 92, pp. 148-151.
• Stern, Harold P. Birds, Beasts, Blossoms, and Bugs: The Nature of Japan. New York: H.N. Abrams, 1976.
• Lee, Sherman E., Michael R. Cunningham, and Ursula Korneitchouk. One Thousand Years of Japanese Art (650-1650): From the Cleveland Museum of Art: Catalogue. New York: Japan Society, 1981.

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.