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About the Artwork
Artist Tani Bunchō painted this image in a mountain pavilion during winter. He inscribed it with two lines of a poem: “The stone cliff of layered rocks is extremely high. Waterfalls tumbling from the skies reverberate in the clouds.” The scholarly figure and attendant carrying his qin (a stringed instrument) are set amid majestically soaring mountains in China. For many people in Japan at the time, the image would call to mind a poem about a waterfall at Mount Lu by Chinese poet Li Bai (701–762).
Inscriptions
The stone cliff of layered rocks is extremely high. Waterfalls tumbling from the skies reverberate in the clouds.
Provenance
?–1972: (Shogoro Yabumoto, Amagasaki, Hyōgo Prefecture, Japan, sold to the Cleveland Museum of Art) 1972–: The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH
Exhibition history
Year in Review: 1972. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (February 27-March 18, 1973). The Lure of Painted Poetry: Japanese and Korean Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (April 15-August 21, 2011). Japanese art rotation. The Cleveland Museum of Art (organizer) (August 19, 2019-January 5, 2020). To the River's South in Japanese Painting. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (December 15, 2023-June 2, 2024).
Quick Overview
- Artist
- Tani Bunchō (Japanese, 1763–1841)
- Date
- 1790
- Medium
- hanging scroll; ink and color on silk
- Dimensions
- Painting: 112.5 x 51.1 cm (44 5/16 x 20 1/8 in.); Mounted: 214 x 54.5 cm (84 1/4 x 21 7/16 in.)
- Type
- Painting
- Classification
- Painting
- Department
- Japanese Art
- Credit line
- John L. Severance Fund
- Accession no.
- 1972.16
More by Tani Bunchō in museum collections
Data retrieved from the Cleveland Museum of Art on October 8, 2026. The museum may have updated its record since.
Open-access museum record · AT-00009689
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