Weizheng Riding on an Ox (1687): Art, History and Details

Weizheng Riding on an Ox (1687) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Yamaguchi Sekkei (Japanese, 1644–1732); Nanyuan Xingpai (Chinese, 1631–1692).

The work and its context

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

The inscription at the top of this painting was brushed by Ōbaku school monk Nanyuan Xingpai (Japanese: Nangen Shōha), a Chinese Buddhist monk who emigrated to Japan in 1654, while the painting was done in ink by Yamaguchi Sekkei, a Japanese painter active in Kyoto who was known for his Buddhist subjects, many of which remain in temples today. The figure here reads a text while riding backward upon a water buffalo. Sekkei's painting depicts the Chinese monk Weizheng (986–1049), also known as "Zheng of the Yellow Ox" after his favored mount. Nanyuan's inscription is a poem about the monk.

Object facts

• Title: Weizheng Riding on an Ox
• Date: 1687
• Creator attribution: Yamaguchi Sekkei (Japanese, 1644–1732); Nanyuan Xingpai (Chinese, 1631–1692)
• Culture: Japan, Edo period (1615–1868)
• Type: Painting
• Technique: hanging scroll; ink on paper
• Dimensions: Painting: 116.5 x 39 cm (45 7/8 x 15 3/8 in.); Mounted: 201.3 x 55.9 cm (79 1/4 x 22 in.)
• Collection: ASIAN - Hanging scroll
• Department: Japanese Art
• Accession number: 1973.86

A detail from the museum

The Ōbaku lineage of the Zen school of Buddhism in Japan is named for Mount Huangbo (Japanese: Ōbaku) in China.

Collection credit

Gift of Nisaburo Mizutani

Further reading listed by the museum

• Cunningham, Michael R. "The Japanese Painter Yamaguchi Sekkei." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 67, no. 1 (1980): 2–16.
• 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.