Horse Race at the Kamo Shrine (early to mid-1600s): Art, History and Details

Horse Race at the Kamo Shrine (early to mid-1600s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

Kamo Shrine in Kyoto, seen in the upper half of the left screen, has held an annual horse race on May 5th since the ninth century. Serving as a snapshot of the festivities, this pair of screens captures nearly 600 people watching the race, beginning at the bottom part of the right screen and continuing to the left. The race is a great spectacle where aristocratic riders cling to their fast and unwieldy mounts. While many of those in attendance seem in rapt attention to the main event, other vignettes depict people engaged in an array of activities. This pair of screens was likely originally part of a group of linked murals.

Object facts

• Title: Horse Race at the Kamo Shrine
• Date: early to mid-1600s
• Culture: Japan, Edo period (1615–1868)
• Type: Painting
• Technique: One of a pair of six-panel folding screens; ink and color on gilded paper
• Dimensions: Image: 161 x 362 cm (63 3/8 x 142 1/2 in.); Overall: 176.5 x 377.3 cm (69 1/2 x 148 9/16 in.); Closed: 176.5 x 64 x 12.5 cm (69 1/2 x 25 3/16 x 4 15/16 in.)
• Collection: ASIAN - Folding screen
• Department: Japanese Art
• Accession number: 1976.95.1

Collection credit

Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Lee, Sherman E. “Horse Racing at Kamo Shrine.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 64, no. 8 (October 1977): 253–275.
• The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1978. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1978.
• 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.