Oath of the Peach Garden, from Romance of the Three Kingdoms (c. 1780): Art, History and Details

Oath of the Peach Garden, from Romance of the Three Kingdoms (c. 1780) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Matsumura Goshun (Japanese, 1752–1811).

The work and its context

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

This painting depicts a pivotal scene from the classic Chinese historical novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Three men, Liu Bei, seen to the left, and Guan Yu and Zhang Fei, seen to the right, become sworn brothers amid peach blossom trees. Set toward the end of China’s Eastern Han dynasty (25–220 CE), the episode features the tagline “We seek not to be born on the same day but hope that we may die on the same day.” Written in the 1300s, the first published translation in Japanese appeared around 1690, after which it exploded in popularity.

Object facts

• Title: Oath of the Peach Garden, from Romance of the Three Kingdoms
• Date: c. 1780
• Creator attribution: Matsumura Goshun (Japanese, 1752–1811)
• Culture: Japan, Edo period (1615–1868)
• Type: Painting
• Technique: hanging scroll; ink and color on silk
• Dimensions: Image: 28.2 x 25.2 cm (11 1/8 x 9 15/16 in.); Including mounting: 114.3 x 44.2 cm (45 x 17 3/8 in.)
• Collection: ASIAN - Hanging scroll
• Department: Japanese Art
• Accession number: 1987.35

A detail from the museum

Matsumura Goshun was trained in literati art by Yosa Buson and Maruyama Ōkyo.

Collection credit

John L. Severance Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Cunningham, Michael R. Unfolding Beauty: Japanese Screens from the Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland, OH: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2001.
• Sŏn, Sŭng-hye. The Lure of Painted Poetry: Japanese and Korean Art. Cleveland, OH: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2011.

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.