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Oath of the Peach Garden, from Romance of the Three Kingdoms
Matsumura Goshun (Japanese, 1752–1811)
c. 1780
- Medium
- hanging scroll; ink and color on silk
- Classification
- Painting
- Dimensions
- Image: 28.2 x 25.2 cm (11 1/8 x 9 15/16 in.); Including mounting: 114.3 x 44.2 cm (45 x 17 3/8 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
This painting depicts a pivotal scene from the classic Chinese historical novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Three men, Liu Bei, seen to the left, and Guan Yu and Zhang Fei, seen to the right, become sworn brothers amid peach blossom trees. Set toward the end of China’s Eastern Han dynasty (25–220 CE), the episode features the tagline “We seek not to be born on the same day but hope that we may die on the same day.” Written in the 1300s, the first published translation in Japanese appeared around 1690, after which it exploded in popularity.
