Cleveland Museum of Art
Chinese Beauty
Kubo ShunmanLinkedCulture matchlcp-a3f653adb54c
- Date
- late 1700s–early 1800s
- Medium
- Hanging scroll; ink and color on silk
- Culture
- Japan, Edo period (1615–1868)
- Department
- Japanese Art
- Institution
- Cleveland Museum of Art
- Object ID
- 153810
From the Cleveland Museum of Art record
Ukiyo-e artists’ exploration of beautiful people extended to figures from other lands. Here, an elegant Chinese palace lady holding a fan stands before a banana plant. The poem at the top is written in a Japanese appropriation of Chinese called kanbun. Based on its imagery of a palanquin (an enclosed couch with poles used for carrying passengers), silk fan, and autumn winds, it may allude to the story of Lady Ban (about 48 BC–about AD 2). A Chinese beauty famous for her scholarly achievements, Ban was once consort to an emperor but later lost his favor. In a poem attributed to her, she compared herself to a used silk fan put away in autumn.
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 codesHide QR codes
Open QR codes for this object page and the museum record. They stay collapsed until needed.
Provenance & credit
As published by the source institution. Coverage varies — not every institution's open-data feed includes ownership history.
- Credit line
- Kelvin Smith Fund
- Provenance
- ?–1988: (Eastern Fine Arts, New York, NY, sold to the Cleveland Museum of Art) | 1988–: The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH
Related across collections
Semantically similar works from Cleveland Museum of Art and other institutions.