West Lake (mid-1700s): Art, History and Details

West Lake (mid-1700s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Ike Taiga (Japanese, 1723–1776).

The work and its context

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

West Lake near Hangzhou, China, has been home to revered poets who immortalized it in their poetry. Tang dynasty poet Bai Juyi (772–846) lived in its vicinity, and Song dynasty poet Lin Bu (967–1028) led a reclusive life on Solitary Hill near the lake. Landscape paintings of West Lake gained in popularity in Japan as early as the 1400s. The distinctive, arched bridges connecting small islands in the lake identify the subject. Ike Taiga was among the first generation of Japanese artists to emulate Chinese scholars who painted as amateurs and gifted their work to friends and colleagues.

Object facts

• Title: West Lake
• Date: mid-1700s
• Creator attribution: Ike Taiga (Japanese, 1723–1776)
• Culture: Japan, Edo period (1615–1868)
• Type: Painting
• Technique: Hanging scroll; ink and light color on paper
• Dimensions: Painting: 58 x 133 cm (22 13/16 x 52 3/8 in.); Mounted: 170.5 x 140.3 cm (67 1/8 x 55 1/4 in.)
• Collection: ASIAN - Hanging scroll
• Department: Japanese Art
• Accession number: 1970.69

A detail from the museum

Among Taiga's sources for his paintings were images he studied in Chinese wood-block–printed books.

Collection credit

John L. Severance Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Lee, Sherman E. “The Year in Review for 1970.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 58, no. 2 (1971): 22–71.
• Sŏn, Sŭng-hye. The Lure of Painted Poetry: Japanese and Korean Art. Cleveland, OH: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2011.
• "Memorable Works from Yanagi Takashi." Yanagi: A Family of Art Dealers in Kyoto. Impressions: the Journal of the Japanese Society of America 46 (2025): 174–185.

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.