Literary Gathering in the Orchid Pavilion
Maruyama Ōkyo (Japanese, 1733–1795)
late 1700s
- Medium
- Six-panel folding screen; ink and slight color on paper
- Classification
- Painting
- Dimensions
- Image: 83 x 191.8 cm (32 11/16 x 75 1/2 in.); Overall: 95.7 x 204.5 cm (37 11/16 x 80 1/2 in.); Open and extended: 83 x 243 cm (32 11/16 x 95 11/16 in.)
- Culture
- Japan, Edo period (1615–1868)
- Museum
- Cleveland Museum of Art, Japanese Art
- Credit line
- John L. Severance 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
A cheerful gathering of poets was one the most popular themes of East Asian literati paintings. Literary Gathering in the Orchid Pavilion depicts a poets’ party hosted in AD 353 by the famous Chinese calligrapher Wang Xizhi to celebrate the Spring Purification Festival, observed annually on the third day of the third month. Wang invited 41 scholar-poets to compose poetry and drink while seated along the bank of a winding rivulet. This screen would have appeared on the left and shows preparations for the gathering. The lost right screen is assumed to have depicted the poets sitting along the stream.
