Public collection via the Cleveland Museum of Art
AT-00009483Scenes from Essays in Idleness
Also known as: Scenes from "Essays in Idleness"; Essays in Idleness; Scenes from Tsurezuregusa by Yoshida Kenko
About the Artwork
Matsumura Goshun inscribed passages from Buddhist monk Yoshida Kenkō’s (1283–1350) well-known collection of anecdotes, Essays in Idleness, across the top of each of the twelve panels of this pair of screens. Goshun illustrated the episodes with his vision of the figures who feature in them. The texts cascade down from right to left, forming unique compositional relationships with the images below.
Provenance
?–1971: (Mathias Komor [1909–1984], New York, NY, sold to the Cleveland Museum of Art) 1971–: The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH
Exhibition history
Year in Review: 1971. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (December 28, 1971-February 6, 1972). Japanese Screens from the Museum and Cleveland Collections. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (March 23-May 8, 1977). Byobu: The Art of the Japanese Screen. The Cleveland Museum of Art (organizer) (August 1-October 14, 1984). Byobu: The Art of the Japanese Screen. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (December 8, 1987-January 10, 1988). Asian Autumn: Splendid Variety: 18th-Century Art in Japan. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (November 16, 1993-March 6, 1994). Unfolding Beauty: Japanese Screens from the Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (July 15-September 16, 2001). Stories in Japanese Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (October 8, 2021-April 3, 2022).
Data retrieved from the Cleveland Museum of Art on October 8, 2026. The museum may have updated its record since.
Quick Overview
- Artist
- Matsumura Goshun (Japanese, 1752–1811)
- Date
- late 1700s–early 1800s
- Medium
- Pair of six-panel folding screens; ink and color on paper
- Type
- Painting
- Classification
- Painting
- Department
- Japanese Art
- Credit line
- Andrew R. and Martha Holden Jennings Fund
- Accession no.
- 1971.43
More by Matsumura Goshun in museum collections
Open-access museum record · AT-00009483
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