Monk Mending Clothes in the Morning Sun (Chōyō Hotetsuzu) (c. 1350): Art, History and Details

Monk Mending Clothes in the Morning Sun (Chōyō Hotetsuzu) (c. 1350) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

This painting illustrates the Zen ideal of cultivating one’s spirit through all moments of life, from the mundane to the marvelous. The monk pictured is simply mending his robes, but it is a meditative activity. A “mending clothes” image would typically form a pair with another on the theme of “reading by moonlight.” While the seals on the painting were added at a later date, similar seals appear on other ink figures and bird-and-flower compositions.

Object facts

• Title: Monk Mending Clothes in the Morning Sun (Chōyō Hotetsuzu)
• Date: c. 1350
• Culture: Japan, Nanbokuchō period (1336–92)
• Type: Painting
• Technique: hanging scroll; ink on paper
• Dimensions: Image: 84.3 x 35.2 cm (33 3/16 x 13 7/8 in.); Overall: 168.5 x 47.7 cm (66 5/16 x 18 3/4 in.); with knobs: 168.5 x 52 cm (66 5/16 x 20 1/2 in.)
• Collection: ASIAN - Hanging scroll
• Department: Japanese Art
• Accession number: 1962.163

Collection credit

John L. Severance Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Mochizuki, Shinjō 望月信成. Suibokuga-ten [水墨画展 = Suiboku Painting of China and Japan]. [Osaka]: Osaka Municipal Art Museum, 1958.
• Lee, Sherman E. Tea Taste in Japanese Art. New York, NY: The Asia House Gallery, dist. by H. Abrams, 1963.
• Ho, Wai-Kam. “Kaō: Myth and Speculations.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 50, no. 4 (April 1963): 71–79.

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.