Water Buffalo and Herdboys (late 1200s–early 1300s): Art, History and Details

Water Buffalo and Herdboys (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:

In southern China, farmers use water buffalos to help plow their fields, which children often tend. In Buddhist teachings, the subject of herding or taming an ox was used to illustrate the 10 steps to enlightenment, or spiritual awakening. A single image may be read as a metaphorical representation of the Chan process of attaining enlightenment, the difficulty of which was likened to that of finding a strayed buffalo. Here, a buffalo is watered by a boy, another takes a bath in the pond. Chan paintings introduced to Japan were often remounted to fit them into niches for display (tokonoma), which explains the painting’s current format.

Object facts

• Title: Water Buffalo and Herdboys
• Date: late 1200s–early 1300s
• Culture: China, Yuan dynasty (1271-1368)
• Type: Painting
• Technique: Hanging scroll; ink on silk
• Dimensions: Painting: 23.7 x 50.5 cm (9 5/16 x 19 7/8 in.); Overall with knobs: 109 x 67.6 cm (42 15/16 x 26 5/8 in.)
• Collection: ASIAN - Hanging scroll
• Department: Chinese Art
• Accession number: 1977.200

Collection credit

Gift of Herbert F. Leisy in memory of his wife, Helen Stamp Leisy

Further reading listed by the museum

• Ho, Wai-kam, Sherman E. Lee, Laurence Sickman, and Marc F. Wilson. Eight Dynasties of Chinese Painting: The Collections of the Nelson Gallery-Atkins Museum, Kansas City, and the Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland, OH: Cleveland Museum of Art, in cooperation with Indiana University Press, 1980.
• Griswold, William, Xiaofei Tian, Richard Von Glahn, Feng Zhao, S. J. Vainker, Masaaki Itakura, Jiang Wu, et al. China’s Southern Paradise: Treasures from the Lower Yangzi Delta. Edited by Clarissa Von Spee. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 2023.

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.