Cleveland Museum of Art

Reeds and Geese

Yishan Yining [Issan Ichinei]

Date

1314–17

Medium

hanging scroll; ink on paper

Culture

Japan, Kamakura period (1185–1333)

Department

Japanese Art

Institution

Cleveland Museum of Art

Reeds and geese has been a common pairing in Chinese literary and visual culture for many centuries. This painting presents the contribution of a Japanese amateur painter, almost certainly a Zen Buddhist monk, to Japan’s fledgling efforts to add the theme to its own cultural vocabulary in the early 1300s. As was customary at the time in Japan, the painter did not sign or seal his work; the inscription, a poem added to the painting by the eminent émigré monk Yishan Yining, along with his signature and seal, was of far greater cultural value. Today, the modestly sized painting has tremendous significance as one of the earliest surviving examples of Japanese ink paintings with reeds and geese. Tokyo National Museum owns a copy of this painting made by Kano Gyokusen (1796–1864) when he was 14 years old.

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