The Cleveland Museum of Art

Collection Online as of May 28, 2022

Scenes from Essays in Idleness

徒然草図屏風

late 1700s–early 1800s

Part of a set. See all set records

Matsumura Goshun 松村呉春

(Japanese, 1752-1811)

Japan, Edo period

(1615-1868)

Pair of six-panel folding screens; ink and color on paper

Andrew R. and Martha Holden Jennings Fund 1971.43

Location

not on view

Description

Matsumura Goshun inscribed passages from Buddhist monk Yoshida Kenkō’s (1283–1350) well-known collection of anecdotes, Essays in Idleness, across the top of each of the twelve panels of this pair of screens. Goshun illustrated the episodes with his vision of the figures who feature in them. The texts cascade down from right to left, forming unique compositional relationships with the images below.

Provenance
?-1971
(Mathias Komor [1909-1984], New York, NY, sold to the Cleveland Museum of Art)
1971-
The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH
Citations
Cunningham, Michael R. Unfolding Beauty: Japanese Screens from the Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland, OH: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2001. Mentioned and Reproduced: pp. 60–61, cat. no. 27
Sŏn, Sŭng-hye. The Lure of Painted Poetry: Japanese and Korean Art. Cleveland, OH: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2011. Mentioned and Reproduced: cat. 29a and 29b
Exhibition history

Year in Review: 1971. The Cleveland Museum of Art (organizer) (December 28, 1971-February 6, 1972).

Japanese Screens from the Museum and Cleveland Collections. The Cleveland Museum of Art (organizer) (March 23-May 8, 1977).

Byobu: The Art of the Japanese Screen. The Cleveland Museum of Art (organizer) (August 1-October 14, 1984).

Byobu: The Art of the Japanese Screen. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (December 8, 1987-January 10, 1988).

Asian Autumn: Splendid Variety: 18th-Century Art in Japan. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (November 16, 1993-March 6, 1994).

Unfolding Beauty: Japanese Screens from the Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art (organizer) (July 15-September 16, 2001).

Stories in Japanese Art (Japanese art rotation). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (October 8, 2021-April 3, 2022).

Source URL: https://www.clevelandart.org/art/1971.43