Kannon (c. 1868–1912): Art, History and Details

Kannon (c. 1868–1912) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

The bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara (Kannon in Japanese) stands with each of his feet upon a lotus blossom. The Buddha Amitabha (Amida in Japanese) appears in his headdress. The text written in golden characters attached to the top of the painting is a portion of a religious text extolling the virtues of the bodhisattva. The painter was inspired by Buddhist paintings of the Korean Goreyo period (918–1392); he attempted to reproduce the diaphanous shawl sometimes seen in such early works.

Object facts

• Title: Kannon
• Date: c. 1868–1912
• Culture: Japan, Meiji period (1868–1912)
• Type: Painting
• Technique: hanging scroll; ink and color on silk; inscription in gold ink on silk
• Dimensions: Overall: 227.9 x 75 cm (89 3/4 x 29 1/2 in.); Painting only: 155 x 51.4 cm (61 x 20 1/4 in.)
• Collection: ASIAN - Hanging scroll
• Department: Japanese Art
• Accession number: 1986.8

Collection credit

Severance and Greta Millikin Purchase Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Turner, Evan H. “The Year in Review for 1986.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 74, no. 2 (February 1987): 38–79.
• Cunningham, Michael R., Stanislaw J. Czuma, Anne E. Wardwell, and J. Keith Wilson. Masterworks of Asian Art. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1998.
• Fishbein, Richard. "Collecting Kannon." Impressions: Official Publication of the Ukiyo-E Society of America 35 (2014): 177–179.

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.