The Bird's Nest Patriarch (early to mid-1600s): Art, History and Details

The Bird's Nest Patriarch (early to mid-1600s) 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:

Tawaraya Sōtatsu’s painting was inspired by a 1602 Chinese book that featured images of legendary Chinese Buddhist experts and Daoist sages. The monk portrayed here is Niaoge, which literally means “Bird’s Nest.” He was a Zen practitioner who favored the isolation of treetops, from which he offered advice to the perplexed. The posture of the single figure suggests a dialogue with someone below. Sōtatsu was a master of the “boneless” (mokkotsu), or un-outlined, style of ink painting that relies on layered pools of ink wash for effect.

Object facts

• Title: The Bird's Nest Patriarch
• Date: early to mid-1600s
• Creator attribution: Tawaraya Sōtatsu (Japanese, c. 1570–c. 1640)
• Culture: Japan, Edo period (1615–1868)
• Type: Painting
• Technique: hanging scroll; ink on paper
• Dimensions: Image: 95.8 x 38.7 cm (37 11/16 x 15 1/4 in.); Overall: 187.3 x 50.8 cm (73 3/4 x 20 in.)
• Collection: ASIAN - Hanging scroll
• Department: Japanese Art
• Accession number: 1958.289

A detail from the museum

This painting is based on the 1602 illustrated publication Marvelous Traces of Immortals and Buddhas (Chinese: Xianfo qizong).

Collection credit

Norman O. Stone and Ella A. Stone Memorial Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• “Annual Report of the Year 1958.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 46, no. 6 (June 1959): 111–158.
• S. E. L. “Year in Review.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 46, no. 10 (December 1959): 210–231.
• 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.