Cleveland Museum of Art

Poems and Pictures of the Eight Views of Xiao-Xiang

Unkoku TōganLinkedCulture matchlcp-9fe502fcb02e

Date: 1605–12
Medium: Handscroll; ink on paper
Culture: Japan, Momoyama period (1573–1615)
Department: Japanese Art
Institution: Cleveland Museum of Art
Object ID: 394516

From the Cleveland Museum of Art record

Unkoku Tōgan brushed these scenes using the splashed-ink technique associated in Japan with the Chinese monk Yujian Ruofen (active late 1200s). Xiao-Xiang refers to the region in present-day Hunan province, where the Xiang River and its tributaries converge. Each of the eight views evokes a time of day or season. The earliest surviving series of Xiao-Xiang paintings is by Wang Hong (active mid-1100s), but textual evidence tells us the theme appears earlier. It was later adopted in Japan and Korea, as seen here. The poems were inscribed by Inkei Gentetsu, the third abbot of the Rinzai Zen temple Tōshunji, Japan The “Tō” of Tōgan comes from the name of painter Sesshū Tōyō (1420–1506).

View at Cleveland Museum of Art ↗

The authoritative record is held by Cleveland Museum of Art. LinkedCulture surfaces this object and its connections; it does not alter institutional metadata.

Get printable QR codes

Open QR codes for this object page and the museum record. They stay collapsed until needed.

Open this page

See at Cleveland Museum of Art

Provenance & credit

As published by the source institution. Coverage varies — not every institution's open-data feed includes ownership history.

Credit line: Leonard C. Hanna Jr. Fund
Provenance: Mōri family, Yamaguchi, Japan | ?–2020: (London Gallery, Ltd., Tokyo, Japan, sold to the Cleveland Museum of Art) | 2020–: The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH