Lineage Portrait of Buddhist Monks (1600s): Art, History and Details

Lineage Portrait of Buddhist Monks (1600s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

This painting features 24 Buddhist priests, likely of several generations and members of the same temple or school. The priests are depicted with attention to individual features and appearances, dressed in their formal garments. They may represent monks of the Ōbaku school, a form of Chan (Japanese: Zen) Buddhism founded in Japan by Chinese émigré monks and their Japanese followers.

Object facts

• Title: Lineage Portrait of Buddhist Monks
• Date: 1600s
• Culture: China, Qing dynasty (1644–1911)
• Type: Painting
• Technique: hanging scroll mounted on a panel (framed); ink, color, and gold on paper
• Dimensions: Overall: 171.5 x 99.7 cm (67 1/2 x 39 1/4 in.)
• Collection: ASIAN - Hanging scroll
• Department: Chinese Art
• Accession number: 2003.352

A detail from the museum

The painting has remnants of a Japanese mounting, indicating that it was once kept in Japan.

Collection credit

Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Robert T. Gow

Further reading listed by the museum

• Chang, Willow Hai. Song of Life: Chinese Art from the Gow Family Collection. Naples, FL: Naples Museum of Art, 2000.
• Sims, Lowery Stokes. The Persistence of Geometry Form, Content, and Culture in the Collection of the Cleveland Museum of Art : [Exhibition] the Cleveland Museum of Art at the Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland, 9 June-20 August 2006. Cleveland, OH: The Museum, 2006.
• Nishigori, Ryōsuke 錦織亮介. "黄槃派の祖師源流図について." Obaku Bunka 黄檗文華 vol. 140 (2019–2020), 55–75.

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.