Window mode follows your eyes with your camera, in this browser only: no picture or position leaves your device.
Calligraphy with Willow and Swallows
Ikkyū Sōjun (Japanese, 1394–1481)
1400s
- Medium
- hanging scroll, ink on paper
- Classification
- Painting
- Dimensions
- Overall: 104 x 34.8 cm (40 15/16 x 13 11/16 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
The famed Buddhist monk Ikkyū is best remembered for his calligraphy. Calligraphic conventions of his time called for brushwork that did not vary much in style from character to character. However, as Ikkyū’s lines progress, his brushwork wanders between standard script and a sort of shorthand, marked by an uneven distribution of ink and a reduction of the characters to only the most necessary strokes. Ikkyū’s direct communication of emotion via brushwork became characteristic of the works produced by monks affiliated with the temple Daitokuji later in the Edo period (1615–1868).
