Selections from the Collection of Japanese Poems from Ancient and Modern Times (Kokin wakashū) with Design of Pines Along the Shore
calligraphy by Hon'ami Kōetsu (Japanese, 1558–1637)
attributed to Tawaraya Sōtatsu (Japanese, c. 1570–c. 1640)
1600s
- Medium
- handscroll; ink on silk with gold and silver
- Classification
- Calligraphy
- Dimensions
- Average: 32.7 x 549 cm (12 7/8 x 216 1/8 in.)
- Culture
- Japan, Momoyama period (1573-1615) to Edo period (1615-1858)
- Museum
- Cleveland Museum of Art, Japanese Art
- Credit line
- Leonard C. Hanna Jr. 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
The calligrapher and craftsman Hon’ami Kōetsu frequently collaborated with Tawaraya Sōtatsu, a painter who ran a studio that produced fans and screens. Sōtatsu’s work featured abstracted and flattened shapes, fields of color and gold, and asymmetry. In particular, motifs that appeared in small scale, such as flora and fauna, in early decorated Japanese papers were painted in a larger scale—blown up as if seen under a magnifying glass. For this handscroll, Kōetsu brushed poems from the autumn section of a poetry anthology onto silk with a landscape of pines in gold and silver likely painted by Sōtatsu.
