Irises (1700s): Art, History and Details

Irises (1700s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Watanabe Shikō (Japanese, 1683–1755).

The work and its context

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

The subject of this painting comes from a 10th-century text. It tells of a young nobleman’s journey into the lonely countryside, far from the capital city of Heian-kyō (Kyoto). There he came upon a small stream, the banks of which were covered with blooming irises, on which the artist has chosen to focus our attention. While viewing the beautiful flowers the nobleman composed a poem: I have a beloved wife, Familiar as the skirt of a well-worn robe, And so this distant journeying Fills my heart with grief.

Object facts

• Title: Irises
• Date: 1700s
• Creator attribution: Watanabe Shikō (Japanese, 1683–1755)
• 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: Painting: 154.4 x 360.4 cm (60 13/16 x 141 7/8 in.); Mounted: 170.7 x 376.7 cm (67 3/16 x 148 5/16 in.)
• Collection: ASIAN - Folding screen
• Department: Japanese Art
• Accession number: 1954.603.2

Collection credit

Gift of The Norweb Foundation

Further reading listed by the museum

• Edgell, George Harold. Illustrated Catalogue of a Special Loan Exhibition of Art Treasures from Japan. [Tokyo, Japan]: [Sanseido Press], 1936.
• Lee, Sherman. "Irises by Watanabe Shikō." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 42, no. 4 (April 1955): 63–67.
• The Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art Handbook. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1958.

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.