Su Shi (So Shoku) (early 1600s): Art, History and Details

Su Shi (So Shoku) (early 1600s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Unkoku Tōgan (Japanese, 1547–1618).

The work and its context

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

This pair of screens depicts episodes from the stories of famed Song-dynasty poets Su Shi of the 1000s and Zhou-dynasty official Pan Lang of the 900s. Both men were banished by their rulers for their perceived missteps. Su Shi’s comments on a series of economic reforms were seen as criticism of the emperor. Pan Lang composed an ill-advised verse about one of the king’s horses. In the left screen Pan rides backward on his donkey as he returns from exile so that he may have a last look at his now beloved Mount Hua. Su Shi, in the right screen, is shown embarking on his journey into exile. The artist of these screens, Unkoku Tōgan, was the founder of the Unkoku school of painting, which emulated the style of renowned ink painter Sesshū Tōyō (1420–1506). Tōgan was the official painter of the Mori family of what is now Yamaguchi prefecture in the south of Japan.

Object facts

• Title: Su Shi (So Shoku)
• Date: early 1600s
• Creator attribution: Unkoku Tōgan (Japanese, 1547–1618)
• Culture: Japan, Momoyama period (1573–1615)
• Type: Painting
• Technique: one of a pair of six-panel folding screens; ink, light color, and gold on paper
• Dimensions: Image: 155.5 x 360 cm (61 1/4 x 141 3/4 in.); Overall: 172 x 374 cm (67 11/16 x 147 1/4 in.)
• Collection: ASIAN - Folding screen
• Department: Japanese Art
• Accession number: 2006.135.1

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.

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.