Listening to the Wind in the Pines (1400s): Art, History and Details

Listening to the Wind in the Pines (1400s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Ikkyū Sōjun (Japanese, 1394–1481).

The work and its context

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

A monk sits in contemplation below an overhang covered with pine. The poem, titled "Monk in the Mountains Listening to the Wind in the Pines," refers to two Chinese Chan (Zen) Buddhist monks active in the ninth century. It may be translated as follows: Why must the Zen of Rinzai (Linji Yixuan) and Tokusan (Deshan Xuanjian) reside in a single temple for thirty years? Once he's solved his kōan, (the monk) ends his practice and falls asleep in the quietness of the wind among the tall pines. (translated by Osvaldo Mercuri) According to an inscription following the poem, both painting and verse were done by an eminent Japanese Buddhist monk known for revitalizing the Kyoto temple Daitokuji.

Object facts

• Title: Listening to the Wind in the Pines
• Date: 1400s
• Creator attribution: Ikkyū Sōjun (Japanese, 1394–1481)
• Culture: Japan, Muromachi period (1392–1573)
• Type: Painting
• Technique: hanging scroll; ink on paper
• Dimensions: Painting only: 76.8 x 32 cm (30 1/4 x 12 5/8 in.); Including mounting: 153.7 x 38.1 cm (60 1/2 x 15 in.)
• Collection: ASIAN - Hanging scroll
• Department: Japanese Art
• Accession number: 1985.89

A detail from the museum

The word mountain, appearing in the title to the poem on this painting, can also refer to a temple.

Collection credit

Mr. and Mrs. William H. Marlatt Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Nakagawa Kazumasa 中川一政. Bokuseki Ikkyū Sōjun 墨蹟一休宗純. Tōkyō: Chūō Kōronsha, 1986.
• Turner, Evan H. “The Year in Review for 1985.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 73, no. 2 (1986): 26–71.
• Grossman, Nancy, James T. Ulak, Marjorie Williams, and Laurence Channing. Art of Japan: Masterpieces from the Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 2005.

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.