Portrait Study of Seigen (1300s): Art, History and Details

Portrait Study of Seigen (1300s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

This is a portrait study of the monk Seigen (1162–1231). The inscription identifies him and notes that the study is after a portrait in the subtemple Jizō’in at Daigoji. The artist included scars from an illness, and made notations about the colors the clothing should be. Seigen was abbot of Daigoji, one of the most influential Esoteric Buddhist temples in Japanese history.

Object facts

• Title: Portrait Study of Seigen
• Date: 1300s
• Culture: Japan, Kamakura period (1185–1333)
• Type: Painting
• Technique: hanging scroll; ink and slight color on paper
• Dimensions: Image: 25.5 x 40.9 cm (10 1/16 x 16 1/8 in.); Overall: 107.8 x 53.4 cm (42 7/16 x 21 in.); with knobs: 107.8 x 58.2 cm (42 7/16 x 22 15/16 in.)
• Collection: ASIAN - Hanging scroll
• Department: Japanese Art
• Accession number: 1982.55

A detail from the museum

The blotches on the monk's face may have been caused by smallpox.

Collection credit

John L. Severance Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland Museum of Art--Exhibitions--Reflections of Reality in Japanese Art. 2013. INSTITUTIONAL CLIPPING FILE
• Lee, Sherman E. “Year in Review for 1982.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 70, no. 1 (January 1983): 3–55.
• Cunningham, Michael. “Painting the Wind: A Mid-Fifteenth Century ‘Suibokuga.’” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 72, no. 7 (November 1985): 363–377.

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.