The Eight Immortals of the Wine Cup (later 1700s): Art, History and Details

The Eight Immortals of the Wine Cup (later 1700s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Soga Shōhaku (Japanese, 1730–1781).

The work and its context

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

Responding to the desires of the middle class (chonin), some Japanese painters of the late Edo period moved away from the seriousness associated with the Chinese theme of reclusion, focusing instead on the motif’s humorous aspects. The theme Eight Immortals of the Wine Cup is based on a poem by the renowned 8th-century Chinese poet Du Fu about his eight colleagues. These scholars eagerly sought release from their official governmental duties and then supposedly fled the capital for the countryside. There, they engaged in wildly eccentric behavior and adventurous creative work, all fueled by copious amounts of wine. Shohaku’s version of events exaggerates the scholars’ pleasure, as seen in their comical facial expressions.

Object facts

• Title: The Eight Immortals of the Wine Cup
• Date: later 1700s
• Creator attribution: Soga Shōhaku (Japanese, 1730–1781)
• Culture: Japan, Edo period (1615–1868)
• Type: Painting
• Technique: Six-panel folding screen, ink and cut-gold foil on paper
• Dimensions: Image: 120 x 352.2 cm (47 1/4 x 138 11/16 in.); Including mounting: 137.2 x 369.6 cm (54 x 145 1/2 in.)
• Collection: ASIAN - Folding screen
• Department: Japanese Art
• Accession number: 1976.11.1

Collection credit

John L. Severance Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Cunningham, Michael R. Unfolding Beauty: Japanese Screens from the Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland, OH: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2001.
• Soga Shōhaku: burai to iu yuetsu : tokubetsu tenrankai [曾我蕭白 : 無頼という愉悦: 特別展覧会 = Shōhaku show]. [Kyoto]: Kyōto Kokuritsu Hakubutsukan, 2005.
• 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.