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Haboku (Flung-ink) Landscape
About the Artwork
This vague but energetically rendered landscape highlights the brush: the messenger for a moment’s emotional or spiritual state. The painting represents one of many subjects and styles Shugetsu studied and absorbed from the great practitioners of Ming-dynasty China in the late 1400s and early 1500s. The technique of "flung ink," or haboku, disguises purposeful composition as an almost random, distracted series of brushstrokes. Close inspection reveals tonalities and strokes brushed onto a soft, absorbent paper in a range from heavy and wet to crisp ink charges. Not surprisingly, amateur and professional Zen monk-painters favored this "impressionistic" style as an exercise in seeing meaningful detail slowly emerge from what at first seems unclear.
Inscriptions
signed middle right edge: "Shugetsu hitsu." One seal which reads "Nihon satsuyo shakushi Tokan."
Provenance
Hirayama Tanaka Gohei ?-1976: (Gatodo Gallery Co., Ltd., Tokyo, Japan, sold to the Cleveland Museum of Art) 1976-: The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH
Exhibition history
Year in Review, 1976. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (February 1-March 6, 1977). 茶の美術 : 特別展 (Art of the Tea Ceremony). Tokyo National Museum, Tokyo, Japan (organizer) (October 7-November 24, 1980). Visions of Landscape: East and West. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (February 17-March 21, 1982). Suibokuga: Japanese Ink Painting. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (October 1, 1985-February 24, 1986). Byobu: The Art of the Japanese Screen. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (December 8, 1987-January 10, 1988). Object Lessons: Cleveland Creates an Art Museum. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (June 7-September 8, 1991). Highlights of Asian Paintings from The Cleveland Museum of Art. Nara National Museum (organizer) (February 21-March 29, 1998); Suntory Museum of Art (April 28-June 21, 1998). Sesshu, Master of Ink and Brush: 500th Anniversary Exhibition. Kyoto National Museum, Kyoto, Japan (March 12-April 7, 2002). Streams and Mountains Without End: Asian Art and the Legacy of Sherman E. Lee at the Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (June 27-August 23, 2009).
Quick Overview
- Artist
- Shūgetsu Tōkan (Japanese, 1440?–1529)
- Date
- c. 1510
- Medium
- hanging scroll; ink on paper
- Dimensions
- Image: 59.5 x 26.9 cm (23 7/16 x 10 9/16 in.); Overall: 151.1 x 40.6 cm (59 1/2 x 16 in.)
- Type
- Painting
- Classification
- Painting
- Department
- Japanese Art
- Credit line
- Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund
- Accession no.
- 1976.59
More by Shūgetsu Tōkan 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-00009701
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