The Cleveland Museum of Art

Collection Online as of December 19, 2025

Vertically long hanging scroll depicting two snails climbing up the solid, dark-brown background, one on the upper-center left and the other lower-center right. They have streaky blue bodies and circular, pink-brown spiral shells speckled with brown. Silver slime trails streak down below them, a slime trail without a snail in the upper right. Gold text ending in a singular red character runs in a column on the lower right.

Snails

c. 1788–89

Nagasawa Rosetsu

(Japanese, 1754–1799)
Japan, Edo period (1615–1868)
Hanging scroll; ink, color, and metallic pigments on paper
Image: 114.3 x 40.6 cm (45 x 16 in.); Overall: 200.7 x 54 cm (79 x 21 1/4 in.)
John L. Severance Fund 1998.5
Location: Not on view

Did You Know?

Rosetsu was an independent painter active in Kyoto, Japan's cultural capital, known for his visual wit and superb range of technical skills.

Description

In this work, Nagasawa Rosetsu carefully described two snails in a manner known as “earth painting” (doro-e), building up colors mixed with crushed white shells in emulation of the thick brushstrokes of oil paint seen in European painting. A silvery metallic pigment indicates the snails’ trails, glistening along an earthen wall. Notably, one trail has no snail, leaving the viewer to guess why.
  • Japanese hanging scrolls are laminate structures of silk and paper using wheat starch paste as the adhesive. As it ages the paste weakens, causing these layers to separate over time, prompting scrolls to be disassembled and reassembled in a process called “remounting” every 100–150 years.

    This hanging scroll was just beginning to show signs of the paste weakening with bubbles of air appearing between the final lining—the last layer of paper on the back of the scroll—and the rest of the layers. In order to delay a full remounting, the final lining was removed and replaced with a new lining in 2023. This less invasive process stabilized the scroll and flattened distortions caused by the weakening layers.
  • ?–1998
    (James J. Freeman, Kyoto, Japan, sold to the Cleveland Museum of Art)
    1998–
    The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH
  • Cleveland Museum of Art, “Painting by 18th-century Italian Master Gaetano Gandolfi among Works Added to CMA Collection,” March 24, 1998, Cleveland Museum of Art Archives. archive.org
  • Animals in Japanese Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (June 24-December 10, 2023).
  • {{cite web|title=Snails|url=false|author=Nagasawa Rosetsu|year=c. 1788–89|access-date=19 December 2025|publisher=Cleveland Museum of Art}}

Source URL:

https://www.clevelandart.org/art/1998.5