Heron on a Willow Branch (late 1700s): Art, History and Details

Heron on a Willow Branch (late 1700s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Maruyama Ōkyo (Japanese, 1733–1795).

The work and its context

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

Okyo was the most influential painter and teacher of his time in Kyoto. His mastery of brush and ink found expression in a variety of Chinese and Japanese subjects, painting styles, and formats. This depiction of a heron on a willow branch is done in a classical Japanese painting (yamato-e) style, utilizing flat areas of colorful pigments set against an expansive background with little or no spatial depth.

Object facts

• Title: Heron on a Willow Branch
• Date: late 1700s
• Creator attribution: Maruyama Ōkyo (Japanese, 1733–1795)
• Culture: Japan, Edo period (1615–1868)
• Type: Painting
• Technique: Two-panel folding screen; ink, color, lacquer, and gold on silk
• Dimensions: Image: 69.4 x 185 cm (27 5/16 x 72 13/16 in.)
• Collection: ASIAN - Folding screen
• Department: Japanese Art
• Accession number: 1997.108

Collection credit

Bequest of Mrs. A. Dean Perry

Further reading listed by the museum

• Toyomune Minamoto 源豊宗, and Hiroyuki Kano 狩野博幸. Maruyama Ōkyo gashū 円山應擧画集. Kyōto-shi: Kyōto Shinbunsha, 1999.
• Cunningham, Michael R. Unfolding Beauty: Japanese Screens from the Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland, OH: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2001.
• Koyama-Richard, Brigitte. Animaux Dans La Peinture Japonaise. Lyon: Nouvelles éditions Scala, 2020.

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.