Cleveland Museum of Art

Landscape

Gion Nankai

Date

c. 1700–1751

Medium

hanging scroll; ink and color on paper

Culture

Japan, Edo period (1615–1868)

Department

Japanese Art

Institution

Cleveland Museum of Art

A teacher of Confucian ethics, the Chinese philosophical system focused on social harmony and familial responsibility, Gion Nankai was also a painter. Ike Taiga (池大雅) (1723–1776) was among his students. Nankai inscribed this landscape with one of 24 poems for painting subjects composed by the scholar and painter Tang Yin (唐寅) (Chinese, 1470–1524). It reads as follows: The mountain pavilion is desolate, visitors are rare. Mud patches the brushwood gate; leaves patch my clothes. Rising not from the bamboo bed, my head like snow. Already without intent, I abandon questions of Zen.

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