Rack of Clouds from Album of Illustrations for the Tale of Genji (1600s): Art, History and Details

Rack of Clouds from Album of Illustrations for the Tale of Genji (1600s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

This album contains illustrations for the classic literary work the Tale of Genji, authored in the 1000s by Murasaki Shikibu, an aristocrat of the Heian period (794–1185) court. The scenes are painted in the “white drawing” (hakubyō) mode, in which a fine ink line is used to depict figures and spaces with great subtlety, punctuated only occasionally by traces of red pigment for a character’s lips, a detail of a garment, or a decorative element. These two scenes illustrate episodes from the chapters “Thin Veil of Cloud” (Usugumo) and “Barrier Gate” (Sekiya).

Object facts

• Title: Rack of Clouds from Album of Illustrations for the Tale of Genji
• Date: 1600s
• Culture: Japan, Edo period (1615–1868)
• Type: Bound Volume
• Technique: painting in an accordion-style album; ink, light color, and gold on paper
• Dimensions: Each leaf: 26.3 x 22 cm (10 3/8 x 8 11/16 in.); Painting only: 17 x 20.6 cm (6 11/16 x 8 1/8 in.)
• Collection: Japanese Art
• Department: Japanese Art
• Accession number: 1961.202.g

A detail from the museum

The illustrations are identified by chapter title in cartouches to the upper right of the paintings.

Collection credit

Gift of Vera Sterne in memory of her husband, Maurice Sterne

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.