Reverberations of Taiga, Volume 2 (leaf 25) (mid-1700s–1802): Art, History and Details

Reverberations of Taiga, Volume 2 (leaf 25) (mid-1700s–1802) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Aoki Shukuya (Japanese, d. 1802).

The work and its context

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

Aoki Shukuya was a top student of painter Ike Taiga and took responsibility for Taiga’s stylistic legacy. A painting album by Taiga, part of which survives today in Kyoto in hanging scroll format, served as the source for this painting by Shukuya and the matching designs from a set of wood-block–printed volumes published in 1804. The postscript to the books, written and carved by the scholar Minagawa Kien (皆川淇園) (1735–1807), explains that Taiga produced the original album for his wife and fellow painter Tokuyama Gyokuran (徳山玉瀾) (1727/28–1784). The final design in the first volume of the books and Shukuya’s corresponding painting include the text “viewing the moon from a river pavilion” (江楼賞月). The scene alludes to a poem by Tang dynasty (618–907) poet Zhao Gu (趙嘏) (Chinese, active mid-800s). In the poem, a person gazes at the moon from a riverside pavilion and reflects on the absence of a companion who had admired it with him at the same place the year before.

Object facts

• Title: Reverberations of Taiga, Volume 2 (leaf 25)
• Date: mid-1700s–1802
• Creator attribution: Aoki Shukuya (Japanese, d. 1802)
• Culture: Japan, Edo period (1615–1868)
• Type: Portfolio
• Technique: double-leaf from a pair of albums; ink and light color on paper
• Dimensions: Album, closed: 28.3 x 33 cm (11 1/8 x 13 in.)
• Collection: Japanese Art
• Department: Japanese Art
• Accession number: 1979.73.2.25

A detail from the museum

Traditionally, young painters in Japan began their studies with an established master painter. The master's compositions invariably became models that the apprentice copied to learn various ink and brush techniques.

Collection credit

Andrew R. and Martha Holden Jennings Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Lee, Sherman E. “The Year in Review for 1979.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 67, no. 3 (March 1980): 58–99.
• Graham, Patricia J. "Lifestyles of Scholar-Painters in Edo Japan." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 77, no. 7 (September 1990): 262–283.

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.