Imaginary Portrait of Shundai Dazai (late 1700s–1800s): Art, History and Details

Imaginary Portrait of Shundai Dazai (late 1700s–1800s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Tani Bunchō (Japanese, 1763–1841).

The work and its context

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

Shundai (1680–1747) was a noted Confucian scholar and writer. Brought up with a strongly Confucian family background, Bunchō’s veneration for Shundai is understandable. The inscription is by Nozawa Hikoroku, a scholar and poet contemporary with Bunchō.

Object facts

• Title: Imaginary Portrait of Shundai Dazai
• Date: late 1700s–1800s
• Creator attribution: Tani Bunchō (Japanese, 1763–1841)
• Culture: Japan, Edo period (1615–1868)
• Type: Painting
• Technique: hanging scroll; ink and color on paper
• Dimensions: Overall: 130.8 x 38.1 cm (51 1/2 x 15 in.); Painting only: 38 x 26.8 cm (14 15/16 x 10 9/16 in.)
• Collection: ASIAN - Hanging scroll
• Department: Japanese Art
• Accession number: 1985.248

Collection credit

The Kelvin Smith Collection, given by Mrs. Kelvin Smith

Further reading listed by the museum

• Hillier, Jack Ronald. Japanese Drawings of the 18th and 19th Centuries: Catalogue. Washington, D.C.: The Foundation, 1980.
• “Checklist of the Kelvin Smith Bequest.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 75, no. 7 (September 1988): 292–295.

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.