Public collection via the Cleveland Museum of Art
AT-00009562Eight Views of Xiao-Xiang
About the Artwork
Watanabe Shiko enjoyed a versatile and successful career, as well as a privileged upbringing, in Kyoto. His surviving work indicates a capacity to diligently study, master, and then interpret several painting techniques—each of which varies considerably in appearance. These byobu (folding screens), for instance, reflect training in the Kano school idiom that favored a monochromatic ink palette, vigorous brushwork, and traditional Chinese—rather than Japanese—subject matter. Shiko rendered this scenery in a particularly expansive manner, suggesting the vastness of China's topography relative to Japan's. Frequent visitors to the museum will recall that Shiko also painted the collection's favored pair of byobu, the Irises (CMA 1954.603).
Provenance
?–1960: Dr. Sherman Emory Lee [1918–2008] and Ruth Ward Lee [1917–2011], Cleveland, OH, given to the Cleveland Museum of Art 1960–: The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH
Exhibition history
Year in Review (1961). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (November 1-26, 1961). 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). Suibokuga: Japanese Ink Painting. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (October 1, 1985-February 24, 1986). Unfolding Beauty: Japanese Screens from the Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (July 15-September 16, 2001). The Lure of Painted Poetry: Japanese and Korean Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (April 15-August 21, 2011).
Data retrieved from the Cleveland Museum of Art on October 8, 2026. The museum may have updated its record since.
Quick Overview
- Artist
- Watanabe Shikō (Japanese, 1683–1755)
- Date
- early-mid 1700s
- Medium
- One of a pair of six-panel folding screens; ink on paper
- Dimensions
- Painting: 150 x 356 cm (59 1/16 x 140 3/16 in.); Mounted: 170 x 376 cm (66 15/16 x 148 1/16 in.)
- Type
- Painting
- Classification
- Painting
- Department
- Japanese Art
- Credit line
- Gift of Dr. and Mrs. Sherman E. Lee
- Accession no.
- 1960.284
More by Watanabe Shikō in museum collections
Open-access museum record · AT-00009562
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