Scholar Playing a Qin (1800s): Art, History and Details

Scholar Playing a Qin (1800s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

The painting invites viewers to an intimate qin, or zither, recital in the cool breezy night under the moon. The musician at the center gently strums the strings, while his servant boy is drowsing, without realizing the tea pot is steaming. In older times, playing a musical instrument was considered an effective way to cultivate one's spiritual and mental balance.

Object facts

• Title: Scholar Playing a Qin
• Date: 1800s
• Culture: Korea, Joseon dynasty (1392–1910)
• Type: Painting
• Technique: album leaf; ink and color on silk
• Dimensions: Painting only: 23.5 x 23.8 cm (9 1/4 x 9 3/8 in.); Overall: 26.5 x 26.5 cm (10 7/16 x 10 7/16 in.)
• Collection: ASIAN - Album leaf
• Department: Korean Art
• Accession number: 1990.69

A detail from the museum

The Korean zither with six strings, depicted in this painting, was often played by men.

Collection credit

John L. Severance Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Sŏn, Sŭng-hye. The Lure of Painted Poetry: Japanese and Korean Art. Cleveland, OH: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2011.
• Treasures from Korea: Arts and Culture of the Joseon Dynasty, 1392-1910. Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2014.
• Narrative Figure Paintings of the Joseon Dynasty [조선 시대 고사 인물화]. Seoul: National Museum of Korea, 2016.

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.