
Cleveland Museum of Art
Dragon and Tiger
Sesson ShūkeiLinkedCulture matchlcp-b56ed7bf3266
- Date
- c. 1546–56
- Medium
- Pair of six-panel folding screens; ink on paper
- Culture
- Japan, Muromachi period (1392–1573) to Momoyama period (1573–1615)
- Department
- Japanese Art
- Institution
- Cleveland Museum of Art
- Object ID
- 135592
From the Cleveland Museum of Art record
A tiger sits in a bamboo grove whipped with fierce wind, while a dragon claws through clouds above rough waves. Tiger and dragon are Chinese cosmological symbols of the balancing forces in the world, yin (the feminine aspect) and yang (the masculine aspect). The tiger's roar is also said to generate wind, and the dragon clouds. The screens may have originally been meant to express the fluctuating nature of the world as envisioned in the practice of military divination, or forecasting, based on the Yijing ( Book of Changes ). This pair of screens is considered the masterpiece of Sesson's body of work, and may have been created for the lord of Odawara in eastern Japan.
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Provenance & credit
As published by the source institution. Coverage varies — not every institution's open-data feed includes ownership history.
- Credit line
- Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund
- Provenance
- H. Mitsui; C. Satomi. | ?-1959: (Howard Hollis and Co., Cleveland, OH, sold to the Cleveland Museum of Art) | 1959-: The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH, 1959-present
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