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The Bird's Nest Patriarch
Tawaraya Sōtatsu (Japanese, c. 1570–c. 1640)
early to mid-1600s
- Medium
- hanging scroll; ink on paper
- Classification
- Painting
- Dimensions
- Image: 95.8 x 38.7 cm (37 11/16 x 15 1/4 in.); Overall: 187.3 x 50.8 cm (73 3/4 x 20 in.)
- Culture
- Japan, Edo period (1615–1868)
- Museum
- Cleveland Museum of Art, Japanese Art
- Credit line
- Norman O. Stone and Ella A. Stone Memorial Fund
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Little Ones profiles and older: it shows gentle subjects for the very young. How works are placed
View at the Cleveland Museum of Art
About this work
Tawaraya Sōtatsu’s painting was inspired by a 1602 Chinese book that featured images of legendary Chinese Buddhist experts and Daoist sages. The monk portrayed here is Niaoge, which literally means “Bird’s Nest.” He was a Zen practitioner who favored the isolation of treetops, from which he offered advice to the perplexed. The posture of the single figure suggests a dialogue with someone below. Sōtatsu was a master of the “boneless” (mokkotsu), or un-outlined, style of ink painting that relies on layered pools of ink wash for effect.
