Seventy-Two Peaks Under the Blue Sky with Mount Furong (1785): Art, History and Details

Seventy-Two Peaks Under the Blue Sky with Mount Furong (1785) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Matsumura Goshun (Japanese, 1752–1811).

The work and its context

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

The low height of this folding screen suggests its use as a partition in a small tearoom. An inscription identifies the scene as the 72-peak Heng mountain range in Hunan, China, associated with Buddhist and Daoist traditions and celebrated in poetry. Special mention in the inscription is made of Mount Furong, one of the peaks in the range. Matsumura Goshun may have drawn inspiration from his teacher, Yosa Buson (与謝蕪村) (1716–1783), whose final work depicted the same mountain range.

Object facts

• Title: Seventy-Two Peaks Under the Blue Sky with Mount Furong
• Date: 1785
• Creator attribution: Matsumura Goshun (Japanese, 1752–1811)
• Culture: Japan, Edo period (1615–1868)
• Type: Painting
• Technique: Eight-panel folding screen; ink with gold and silver foil on paper
• Dimensions: Image: 51.5 x 275.2 cm (20 1/4 x 108 3/8 in.); Overall: 69.6 x 282.4 cm (27 3/8 x 111 3/16 in.); with frame: 72.9 x 285.7 cm (28 11/16 x 112 1/2 in.)
• Collection: ASIAN - Folding screen
• Department: Japanese Art
• Accession number: 1980.28

A detail from the museum

By painting on silver and gold foil, Matsumura Goshun created an alluring surface and deep space in this surprisingly spare vista.

Collection credit

Andrew R. and Martha Holden Jennings Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Yamane, Yūzō 山根有三, Shūjirō Shimada 島田修二郎, and Terukazu Akiyama 秋山光和. Zaigai Nihon no shihō [在外日本の至宝= Japanese art: selections from western collections]. Vol. 6 Bunjinga, shoha. Tōkyō: Mainichi Shinbunsha, 1980.
• Yamanouchi, Chōzō 山內長三. The History of Japanese Nanga Painting 日本南画史. Tōkyō: Ruri Shobō, 1981.
• Lee, Sherman E. “The Year in Review for 1980.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 68, no. 6 (June 1981): 163–219.

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.