Window mode follows your eyes with your camera, in this browser only: no picture or position leaves your device.
Gazing at a Waterfall
Sōami (Japanese, d. 1525)
early 1500s
- Medium
- Album leaf mounted as a hanging scroll; ink and slight color on paper
- Classification
- Painting
- Dimensions
- Painting: 29 x 30.1 cm (11 7/16 x 11 7/8 in.); Mounted with knobs: 113 x 47.6 cm (44 1/2 x 18 3/4 in.)
- Culture
- Japan, Muromachi period (1392–1573)
- Museum
- Cleveland Museum of Art, Japanese Art
- Credit line
- Purchase from the J. H. Wade 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
Chinese poet Li Bai’s (701–762) poem “Gazing at a Waterfall on Mount Lu” is about experiencing the vastness of the galaxy in relationship to one’s own being. Japanese Zen monk-poet Keijo Shūrin (1440–1518) identified Li’s poem as the inspiration for Japanese painter Geiami’s (1431–1485) work Gazing at a Waterfall, in the collection of the Nezu Museum, which features sharp brushstrokes and bright colors. In contrast, this album leaf’s painter, Geiami’s son Sōami, took a more delicate approach to the theme. The waterfall and the pair watching it frame the mist rising from the water at the center of the image.
