Scenes from the Tales of Ise (mid-1600s): Art, History and Details

Scenes from the Tales of Ise (mid-1600s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

While the 11th-century Tale of Genji is universally regarded as Japan's literary masterpiece, the source for visual imagery in Japanese culture is rivaled by another literary classic, the Tales of Ise. A 10th-century anthology of poems interspersed with commentary, the Ise portrays the emotional and geographical journey of a courtier from the capital (Kyoto) into the countryside and beyond. The poems describe features of the natural, untamed terrain, linking them to the rather melancholy state of the traveler. Since the Tales of Ise was—and remains today—well read by educated Japanese, a person viewing these folding screens would immediately recognize its subject, organized as a series of discrete scenes read from right to left. Neither a signature nor a seal identifies the artist, but judging from related paintings, the work can be ascribed to an artist working in Kyoto during the first quarter of the 17th century in the manner of the painter Iwasa Matabei (1578–1650). This type of historical narrative composition became quite popular around 1600 among patrons favoring a distinctly Japanese style of painting which employed rich mineral pigments and a liberal use of gold.

Object facts

• Title: Scenes from the Tales of Ise
• Date: mid-1600s
• Culture: Japan, Edo period (1615–1868)
• Type: Painting
• Technique: One of a pair of six-panel folding screens; ink, color and gold on paper
• Dimensions: Image: 95.2 x 267 cm (37 1/2 x 105 1/8 in.); Overall: 109.3 x 258.9 cm (43 1/16 x 101 15/16 in.); Closed: 109.3 x 48.5 x 11 cm (43 1/16 x 19 1/8 x 4 5/16 in.)
• Collection: ASIAN - Folding screen
• Department: Japanese Art
• Accession number: 1969.127.1

Collection credit

John L. Severance Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Tōyō kaiga no seika: tokubetsuten: Kurīvurando Bijutsukan no korekushon kara [東洋絵画の精華 : 特别展 : クリーヴラント美術館のコレクションから = Highlights of Asian painting from the Cleveland Museum of Art]. Nara, Japan: Nara National Museum, 1998.
• Cuningham, Michael R. Unfolding Beauty: Japanese Screens from the Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland, OH: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2001.

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.