The Beach at Sumiyoshi from the Tales of Ise (c. 1634): Art, History and Details

The Beach at Sumiyoshi from the Tales of Ise (c. 1634) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Tawaraya Sōtatsu (Japanese, c. 1570–c. 1640).

The work and its context

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

The poem written on the painting comes from The Tales of Ise, a 10th-century poetic narrative of love: In autumn the wild geese cry And chrysanthemums are in flower, Yet how pleasant to dwell By the sea in spring On the Beach of Sumiyoshi.

Object facts

• Title: The Beach at Sumiyoshi from the Tales of Ise
• Date: c. 1634
• Creator attribution: Tawaraya Sōtatsu (Japanese, c. 1570–c. 1640)
• Culture: Japan, Edo period (1615–1868)
• Type: Painting
• Technique: Poetry sheet mounted as an album leaf; ink, color, and gold on paper
• Dimensions: Image: 24.5 x 20.9 cm (9 5/8 x 8 1/4 in.); Overall: 40.6 x 33.2 x 1.6 cm (16 x 13 1/16 x 5/8 in.)
• Collection: ASIAN - Album leaf
• Department: Japanese Art
• Accession number: 1951.398

A detail from the museum

The red structure at the top of this composition is Sumiyoshi Taisha, the Grand Shrine at Sumiyoshi.

Collection credit

John L. Severance Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Lee, Sherman. "Sōtatsu and the Tale of Isé." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 40, no. 4 (April 1953): 62–64.
• The Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art Handbook. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1958.
• Lee, Sherman E. Japanese Decorative Style. [Cleveland]: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1961.

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.