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Preface
Rai Sanyō (Japanese, 1780–1832)
1817
- Medium
- Double-leaf from a pair of folding albums; ink on silk
- Classification
- Portfolio
- Dimensions
- Each page: 25.9 x 18 cm (10 3/16 x 7 1/16 in.)
- Culture
- Japan, Edo period (1615–1868)
- Museum
- Cleveland Museum of Art, Japanese Art
- Credit line
- Gift of Mary B. Lee, C. Bingham Blossom, Dudley S. Blossom III, Laurel B. Kovacik, and Elizabeth B. Blossom, in memory of Elizabeth B. Blossom
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Teens profiles and older: its museum says too little about what it shows to place it for younger viewers. How works are placed
View at the Cleveland Museum of Art
About this work
Historian Rai San’yō, whose family came from Hiroshima and achieved elite samurai status from modest beginnings as textile dyers, contributed three calligraphies to these albums, including this preface, in which he explains that the albums were being assembled to show off the beauty of the landscape along Lake Biwa near Hikone Castle in central Japan. The albums also feature one leaf each by San’yō’s father, a scholar, and his two uncles, a physician and a scholar turned local government official.
