Snow Landscape (mid-1770s): Art, History and Details

Snow Landscape (mid-1770s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Yosa Buson (Japanese, 1716–1783).

The work and its context

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

In this painting, the mountains and sky glow with a hidden warmth from undertones in red as birds descend into the trees around a scholar’s retreat. Yosa Buson is recognized in Japanese literary history as one of the country’s greatest poets, but he was also an accomplished, self-taught painter. His style changed over the course of his career. Initially painting with precise brushwork, he gradually developed a freer style like the one he used in this snowscape.

Object facts

• Title: Snow Landscape
• Date: mid-1770s
• Creator attribution: Yosa Buson (Japanese, 1716–1783)
• Culture: Japan, Edo period (1615–1868)
• Type: Painting
• Technique: hanging scroll; ink and color on paper
• Dimensions: Painting only: 174.6 x 67.3 cm (68 3/4 x 26 1/2 in.)
• Collection: ASIAN - Hanging scroll
• Department: Japanese Art
• Accession number: 1997.111

A detail from the museum

One of the artist's seals reads: "flung ink gives life to brush lines."

Collection credit

Bequest of Mrs. A. Dean Perry

Further reading listed by the museum

• Suzuki Susumu. "Notes on Buson," Museum, no. 175 (October 1965), pp. 11–19.
• French, Calvin L. The Poet-Painters, Buson and His Followers: An Exhibition, the University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor, January 9-February 17, 1974; the Seattle Art Museum, Washington, March 28-May 12, 1974; the Asia House Gallery, New York, October 3-December 1, 1974. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Museum of Art, 1974.
• 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.