The Cleveland Museum of Art

Collection Online as of April 25, 2024

Horse Race at the Kamo Shrine

Horse Race at the Kamo Shrine

early to mid-1600s
(1615–1868)
Pair of six-panel folding screens, ink and color on gilded paper
Image: 161 x 362 cm (63 3/8 x 142 1/2 in.)
Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund 1976.95
Location: not on view

Did You Know?

The winner is decided by the distance between horses, not by which horse finished first.

Description

Here nearly 600 figures, engaged in a bewildering array of activities, have gathered at the Kamo Shrine in Kyoto for the horse race held annually on May 5 since at least the 800s. The entire populace seems to have turned out, apparent in the diversions and revelries spread out across these resplendent byøbu. The race begins on the right screen and continues far into the left along the lower half of the composition. Here the painter's genius for depicting engaging crowd scenes, a characteristic of Heian pictorial compositions, emerges in full force. The range of textile patterns alone is astonishing. The upper regions of the composition feature the shrine, its setting in northern Kyoto west of Lake Takaragaike, its architecture, and the visitors whose intentions range from casually mundane to spiritual. These paintings were originally part of a much larger pictorial narrative of linked murals in fusuma-e format. Four segments are known today from what must have been an extraordinary room of contiguous surfaces, executed by studio-trained but anonymous masters of yamato-e genre painting in Kyoto. The scale of the paintings and the quality of the materials indicate that they were commissioned by a sophisticated, wealthy patron.
  • ?–1976
    (Kochukyo Co., Inc., Tokyo, Japan, sold to the Cleveland Museum of Art)
    1976–
    The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH
  • The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1978. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1978. Reproduced: p. 386 archive.org
    Lee, Sherman E., Michael R. Cunningham, and Ursula Korneitchouk. One Thousand Years of Japanese Art (650-1650): From the Cleveland Museum of Art: Catalogue. New York: Japan Society, 1981. Mentioned and reproduced: pp. 80–81, no. 46
    Cunningham, Michael R., Stanislaw J. Czuma, Anne E. Wardwell, and J. Keith Wilson. Masterworks of Asian Art. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1998. Mentioned: p. 212; Reproduced: pp. 214–215
    Tōyō kaiga no seika: tokubetsuten: Kurīvurando Bijutsukan no korekushon kara [東洋絵画の精華: 特别展: クリーヴラント美術館のコレクションから= Highlights of Asian painting from the Cleveland Museum of Art]. Nara, Japan: Nara National Museum, 1998. Reproduced: pp. 132–133, cat. no. 87
    Cunningham, Michael R. Unfolding Beauty: Japanese Screens from the Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland, OH: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2001. Reproduced: pp. 28–29
    Sakakibara, Satoru. Biombo: Japan heritage as legend of gold. [Japan?]: Nikkei, 2007. Mentioned and Reproduced: pp. 242–243, fig. 98
    Vilbar, Sinéad, and Kevin Gray Carr. Shinto: Discovery of the Divine in Japanese Art. Cleveland, OH: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2019. Mentioned and Reproduced: pp. 40–45, no. 4
  • Shinto: Discovering the Divine in Japanese Art 神道－日本美術における神性の発見. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (April 9-June 30, 2019).
    Main Asian Rotation (Gallery 236). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (April 19-December 24, 2013).
    Main Asian Rotation (Gallery 121).The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (March 10-July 16, 2003).
    Unfolding Beauty: Japanese Screens from the Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (July 15-September 16, 2001).
    Byobu: The Art of the Japanese Screen. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (December 8, 1987-January 10, 1988).
    Byobu: The Art of the Japanese Screen. The Cleveland Museum of Art (organizer) (August 1-October 14, 1984).
    Visions of Landscape: East and West. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (February 17-March 21, 1982).
    Japanese Screens from the Museum and Cleveland Collections. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (March 23-May 8, 1977).
    Year in Review, 1976. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (February 1-March 6, 1977).
  • {{cite web|title=Horse Race at the Kamo Shrine|url=false|author=|year=early to mid-1600s|access-date=25 April 2024|publisher=Cleveland Museum of Art}}

Source URL:

https://www.clevelandart.org/art/1976.95