Swift Bull from the Ten Swift Bulls (late 1200s–early 1300s): Art, History and Details

Swift Bull from the Ten Swift Bulls (late 1200s–early 1300s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

Across the world, animals once played a much larger role in the transportation of the elite. Members of Japan’s imperial court traveled in vehicles pulled by oxen until the late 1400s, when oxcarts were restricted to ceremonial use. One sign of the past importance of the ox as a status symbol survives in this fragment from a scroll of portraits of 10 speedy bulls. The painter layered washes containing differing ratios of black ink to water to create a three-dimensional effect.

Object facts

• Title: Swift Bull from the Ten Swift Bulls
• Date: late 1200s–early 1300s
• Culture: Japan, Kamakura period (1185–1333)
• Type: Painting
• Technique: section of a handscroll mounted as a hanging scroll; ink and slight color on paper
• Dimensions: Painting: 27.1 x 31.9 cm (10 11/16 x 12 9/16 in.)
• Collection: ASIAN - Hanging scroll
• Department: Japanese Art
• Accession number: 1952.286

A detail from the museum

We know the original scroll had ten bulls because a copy of the complete scroll exists.

Collection credit

John L. Severance Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Toda, Kenji. Japanese Scroll Painting. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1935.
• Tōru Mori 森暢. "Sunggyu Zukan no Tsuite" 駿牛図卷に就いて. In Meihin techō: Nihon bijutsu ronshū 名品手帖: 日本美術論集. Ōguchi, Masao 大口理夫, editor. Tōkyō: Sōgeisha, 1944.
• Lee, Sherman E. "One of the Ten Fast Bulls." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 40, no. 9 (1953): 199–200.

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.