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Details / Information for Landscape

Landscape

山水図

early 1500s

Sōami 相阿弥

(Japanese, d. 1525)
Culture
Japan, Muromachi period (1392–1573)
Medium
hanging scroll; ink on paper
Measurements
Image: 128.5 x 111.7 cm (50 9/16 x 44 in.); Overall: 253 x 137.8 cm (99 5/8 x 54 1/4 in.)
Credit Line
John L. Severance Fund 1963.262
Public Domain
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Location
Not on view
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Did You Know?

Another part of this composition survives in Kyushu, Japan.

Description

Kyoto-based painter Sōami adapted the small-format Chinese album leaf and handscroll painting compositions belonging to the Ashikaga shogunate to the large-scale paintings he created for residences and Buddhist temples. As curator of the shogunal collection, Sōami would have carefully examined its Southern Song and Yuan dynasty Chinese paintings, gaining specialized knowledge of a variety of brush modes, including the soft style used for this painting. The scene is part of a continuous landscape once mounted in the folding screen format. Removed from the screen, this section of the painting was cut down, given new backing papers and a textile mounting with a hanging cord at the top and a roller with knobs at the bottom so that it could continue to be appreciated.
A hanging scroll depicts a landscape in black and gray ink with rolling mountains on the upper left and water on the lower right. On the center left, a small waterfall flows into the water, a bridge arcing over it. Near the bottom, people cross the water on a winding bridge. Clouds partially obscure the mountains on the left, otherwise detailed with black horizontal dashes conveying swathes of vegetation and tree foliage.

Landscape

early 1500s

Sōami

(Japanese, d. 1525)
Japan, Muromachi period (1392–1573)

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