Rain Clearing over a Summer’s Mountain (1893–1914): Art, History and Details

Rain Clearing over a Summer’s Mountain (1893–1914) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Seifū Yohei III (Japanese, 1851–1914).

The work and its context

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

Before entering into his apprenticeship with Yohei II, Yohei III trained as a painter in Osaka. He continued to paint throughout his career as a ceramist. Yohei IV authenticated this painting as having been done by his father in a box lid inscription dated to the summer of 1919. The signed inscription by Yohei III in the painting’s upper right gives the title Rain Clearing Over a Summer’s Mountain and is accompanied by his Imperial Household Artist seal. His signature seal is found in the lower left on the grassy riverbank. The composition follows a basic literati painting convention: it is divided into a foreground, middle ground, and background, with trees in the front, a temple in the middle, and mountains at the back. The brushwork, too, with its ovals of inkwash and dry-brushed dots and lines, has the casual feel of a painting made for one’s own amusement or dashed off for a friend. As part of his ceramic practice, Yohei III also made roller ends to be placed at either end of the wooden dowel around which the lower part of a hanging scroll mounting is wrapped. These served both as weights for the painting and as knobs for handling it when rolling and unrolling. The pair here, CMA 2022.152, is made of porcelain with a green glaze.

Object facts

• Title: Rain Clearing over a Summer’s Mountain
• Date: 1893–1914
• Creator attribution: Seifū Yohei III (Japanese, 1851–1914)
• Culture: Japan, Meiji period (1868–1912)
• Type: Painting
• Technique: hanging scroll; ink on paper
• Dimensions: Painting: 122.1 x 32.8 cm (48 1/16 x 12 15/16 in.); Mounted: 183.5 x 44.8 cm (72 1/4 x 17 5/8 in.)
• Collection: Japanese Art
• Department: Japanese Art
• Accession number: 2022.151

A detail from the museum

Seifū Yohei III studied to paint ink compositions in an abstracted, calligraphic way associated with well-read people who made paintings for their own amusement and as gifts for friends.

Collection credit

Gift of James and Christine Heusinger

Further reading listed by the museum

• Maezaki, Shinya and Sinéad Vilbar. Colors of Kyoto: The Seifū Yohei Ceramic Studio. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 2023.

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.