Thirty-Six Poetic Immortals (mid 1700s): Art, History and Details

Thirty-Six Poetic Immortals (mid 1700s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Tatebayashi Kagei (Japanese, active mid-1700s).

The work and its context

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

Fujiwara no Kintō (996–1075), a Japanese courtier, scholar, and poet, compiled select examples by the most celebrated composers of 31-syllable poems (waka) from the 600s to the 1000s. Painters soon made these “thirty-six poetic immortals” a favorite subject, traditionally presenting the poets in sequential, idealized portraits paired with their poems. In this interpretation, a chronologically impossible gathering of these great talents is in progress. The screen’s composition follows one devised by design virtuoso Ogata Kōrin (1658–1716).

Object facts

• Title: Thirty-Six Poetic Immortals
• Date: mid 1700s
• Creator attribution: Tatebayashi Kagei (Japanese, active mid-1700s)
• Culture: Japan, Edo period (1615–1868)
• Type: Painting
• Technique: two-fold screen; ink, color, and gold on paper
• Dimensions: Image: 170 x 182.8 cm (66 15/16 x 71 15/16 in.); Overall: 174.4 x 187.2 cm (68 11/16 x 73 11/16 in.); Closed: 94 x 4 cm (37 x 1 9/16 in.)
• Collection: ASIAN - Folding screen
• Department: Japanese Art
• Accession number: 1960.183

A detail from the museum

The green surface edged with stripes at the upper left of the painting represents tatami matting with a silk border.

Collection credit

Mr. and Mrs. William H. Marlatt Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Lee, Sherman E. Japanese Decorative Style. [Cleveland]: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1961.
• The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1966. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1966.
• The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1969. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1969.

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.