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Chinese Literatus in an Autumn Landscape
Josui Sōen (Japanese, active c. 1489–1500)
late 1400s
- Medium
- hanging scroll; ink on paper
- Classification
- Painting
- Dimensions
- Mounted: 111 x 56.2 cm (43 11/16 x 22 1/8 in.)
- Culture
- Japan, Muromachi period (1392–1573)
- Museum
- Cleveland Museum of Art, Japanese Art
- Credit line
- Gift from the Collection of George Gund III
- 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
In this painting, Sesshū Tōyō’s disciple Sōen depicts a Chinese scholar-official astride a donkey with his attendant behind. Framing their passage on the right side of the scene are two bare willows, and on the left, geese in flight, the cries of which capture the pair’s attention. These elements suggest that the season is late autumn. Sōen, who famously received Sesshū’s 1495 Splashed-ink Landscape as a certificate of his success as a pupil, studied with the master in Suō, presentday Yamaguchi, after which he returned to his native province in the Kanto region.
