Rain Clearing over a Summer’s Mountain
Seifū Yohei III (Japanese, 1851–1914)
1893–1914
- Medium
- hanging scroll; ink on paper
- Classification
- Painting
- Dimensions
- Painting: 122.1 x 32.8 cm (48 1/16 x 12 15/16 in.); Mounted: 183.5 x 44.8 cm (72 1/4 x 17 5/8 in.)
- Culture
- Japan, Meiji period (1868–1912)
- Museum
- Cleveland Museum of Art, Japanese Art
- Credit line
- Gift of James and Christine Heusinger
- 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
Before entering into his apprenticeship with Yohei II, Yohei III trained as a painter in Osaka. He continued to paint throughout his career as a ceramist. Yohei IV authenticated this painting as having been done by his father in a box lid inscription dated to the summer of 1919 . The signed inscription by Yohei III in the painting’s upper right gives the title Rain Clearing Over a Summer’s Mountain and is accompanied by his Imperial Household Artist seal. His signature seal is found in the lower left on the grassy riverbank. The composition follows a basic literati painting convention: it is divided into a foreground, middle ground, and background, with trees in the front, a temple in the middle, and mountains at the back. The brushwork, too, with its ovals of inkwash and dry-brushed dots and lines, has the casual feel of a painting made for one’s own amusement or dashed off for a friend.
As part of his ceramic practice, Yohei III also made roller ends to be placed at either end of the wooden dowel around which the lower part of a hanging scroll mounting is wrapped. These served both as weights for the painting and as knobs for handling it when rolling and unrolling. The…
