Literary Gathering in the Orchid Pavilion (late 1700s): Art, History and Details

Literary Gathering in the Orchid Pavilion (late 1700s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Maruyama Ōkyo (Japanese, 1733–1795).

The work and its context

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

A cheerful gathering of poets was one the most popular themes of East Asian literati paintings. Literary Gathering in the Orchid Pavilion depicts a poets’ party hosted in AD 353 by the famous Chinese calligrapher Wang Xizhi to celebrate the Spring Purification Festival, observed annually on the third day of the third month. Wang invited 41 scholar-poets to compose poetry and drink while seated along the bank of a winding rivulet. This screen would have appeared on the left and shows preparations for the gathering. The lost right screen is assumed to have depicted the poets sitting along the stream.

Object facts

• Title: Literary Gathering in the Orchid Pavilion
• Date: late 1700s
• Creator attribution: Maruyama Ōkyo (Japanese, 1733–1795)
• Culture: Japan, Edo period (1615–1868)
• Type: Painting
• Technique: Six-panel folding screen; ink and slight color on paper
• Dimensions: Image: 83 x 191.8 cm (32 11/16 x 75 1/2 in.); Overall: 95.7 x 204.5 cm (37 11/16 x 80 1/2 in.); Open and extended: 83 x 243 cm (32 11/16 x 95 11/16 in.)
• Collection: ASIAN - Folding screen
• Department: Japanese Art
• Accession number: 1977.1

Collection credit

John L. Severance Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1978. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1978.
• Tōyō kaiga no seika: tokubetsuten: Kurīvurando Bijutsukan no korekushon kara [東洋絵画の精華: 特别展: クリーヴラント美術館のコレクションから= Highlights of Asian painting from the Cleveland Museum of Art]. Nara, Japan: Nara National Museum, 1998.
• Maruyama, Ōkyo, Toyomune Minamoto, and Hiroyuki Kano. Maruyama Ōkyo gashū. Kyōto-shi: Kyōto Shinbunsha, 1999.

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.