Wild Geese (late 1500s-early 1600s): Art, History and Details

Wild Geese (late 1500s-early 1600s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Kano Sanraku (Japanese, 1559–1635).

The work and its context

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

Depictions of geese usually appear as ink paintings in Japan during the 1200s. They later show up in the colorful landscapes of illustrated handscrolls. Such early ink renditions of the birds have long been associated with classical Chinese Zen painting and poetry, which was avidly admired and collected in medieval Japan. In these screens the artist portrayed the waterfowl in a pastoral setting without reference to classical or religious themes. Such ordinary subjects were imbued with special meaning in 14th- and 15th-century Japan through associations with continental culture, Zen thought and poetry, and famous Chinese monk-painters whose painting techniques had become revered as visual emblems of Zen principles. The screens here reflect the continuation of that painting tradition in the late 1500s or early 1600s by the head of the most important studio in Kyoto. Sanraku also executed a number of colorful folding screen compositions, but here he pays homage to the style of early Zen painting.

Object facts

• Title: Wild Geese
• Date: late 1500s-early 1600s
• Creator attribution: Kano Sanraku (Japanese, 1559–1635)
• Culture: Japan, Edo period (1615–1868)
• Type: Painting
• Technique: pair of six-fold screens; ink on paper
• Dimensions: Overall: 170.2 x 371.8 cm (67 x 146 3/8 in.)
• Collection: ASIAN - Folding screen
• Department: Japanese Art
• Accession number: 1987.9

Collection credit

Leonard C. Hanna Jr. Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Turner, Evan H. “The Year in Review for 1987.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 75, no. 2 (February 1988): 30–71.
• Cuningham, Michael R. Unfolding Beauty: Japanese Screens from the Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland, OH: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2001.
• Longhi, Leighton R. Leighton R. Longhi: Forty-Five Years in Asian Art. [New York, N.Y.]: Leighton R. Longhi, 2019.

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.