Portrait of Basho (1700s): Art, History and Details

Portrait of Basho (1700s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Ichijun (Japanese, active 1700s).

The work and its context

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

The 15th-century poet Matsuo Basho is still considered Japan’s greatest master of the haiku poem, a short, 17-syllable verse form that relates some aspect of nature to the human experience. Although he was one of the most celebrated men of his day, he pursued a simple life of self-imposed poverty and solitude. In this portrait, Ichijun alluded to Matsuo’s haiku about the transient life: warau beshi naku beshi, waga asagao no, shibomu toki (to smile or to cry when my face in the morning [glory] is wilted).

Object facts

• Title: Portrait of Basho
• Date: 1700s
• Creator attribution: Ichijun (Japanese, active 1700s)
• Culture: Japan, Edo period (1615–1868)
• Type: Painting
• Technique: hanging scroll; ink and color on paper
• Dimensions: Painting only: 28.2 x 47 cm (11 1/8 x 18 1/2 in.); Including mounting: 112.5 x 64.2 cm (44 5/16 x 25 1/4 in.)
• Collection: ASIAN - Hanging scroll
• Department: Japanese Art
• Accession number: 1988.72

Collection credit

John L. Severance Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• “The Year in Review for 1988.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 76, no. 2 (February 1989): 30–75.
• 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.