Ghost and Oil Lamp (1810): Art, History and Details

Ghost and Oil Lamp (1810) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Tani Bun'ichi (Japanese, 1787–1818).

The work and its context

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

Tani Bun’ichi was the adopted son of Tani Buncho (1763-1840), a master painter and connoisseur. A Bun’ichi painting remarkably similar to this one that depicts a ghost by a lacquer lamp stand, is in the collection the Tokyo temple Zensho-an. That painting once belonged to Sanyutei Encho (1839-1900), a famed raconteur of ghost stories who donated his collection of ghost paintings to the temple. An inscription in gold on the lamp stand in this painting, identical in content to that on the Zensho-an painting, indicates that it was executed in the 12th month of 1810. Bun’ichi explains that he did not like painting ghosts, but tried it out after listening to a person by the name of Ono.

Object facts

• Title: Ghost and Oil Lamp
• Date: 1810
• Creator attribution: Tani Bun'ichi (Japanese, 1787–1818)
• Culture: Japan, Edo period (1615–1868)
• Type: Painting
• Technique: hanging scroll, ink, color, and gold on silk
• Dimensions: Painting only: 109.2 x 48.9 cm (43 x 19 1/4 in.); Including mounting: 187.3 x 65.4 cm (73 3/4 x 25 3/4 in.)
• Collection: ASIAN - Hanging scroll
• Department: Japanese Art
• Accession number: 1992.71

Collection credit

Kelvin Smith Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Turner, Evan H. “The Year in Review for 1992.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 80, no. 2 (February 1993): 38–79.

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.