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About the Artwork
Kitagawa Sōsetsu painted for the Maeda family, powerful rulers of what is present-day Ishikawa Prefecture on the central northern coast of Honshū, Japan’s main island. Screens served as room dividers and backdrops in Maeda grand residences. This composition is considered one of the artist’s masterpieces. Kitagawa Sōsetsu is thought to have been a student of Tawaraya Sōsetsu, who was in turn the student of Tawaraya Sōtatsu the Kyoto-based master painter regarded as the creator of the style that came to be known as Rinpa. By selecting a painter of this lineage, the Maeda family consciously connected their aesthetics to those of the imperial capital as a means of proclaiming their elevated status.
Inscriptions
two seals, lower left: "I-nen; Sosetsu"
Provenance
?–1968: (N. V. Hammer, Inc., New York, NY, sold to the Cleveland Museum of Art) 1968–: The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH
Exhibition history
Year in Review for 1968. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (January 29-March 9, 1969). Rimpa. Japan Society Gallery, New York, NY (organizer) (September 13-November 13, 1971). 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). Rimpa Painting. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (September 19-December 17, 1989). Early Rinpa (Japanese gallery rotation) 235. The Cleveland Museum of Art (organizer) (July 23, 2020-January 17, 2021).
Quick Overview
- Artist
- Kitagawa Sōsetsu (Japanese, active 1639–50)
- Date
- mid-1600s
- Medium
- Pair of six-panel folding screens; ink and color on paper
- Dimensions
- Image: 153.7 x 329.2 cm (60 1/2 x 129 5/8 in.)
- Type
- Painting
- Classification
- Painting
- Department
- Japanese Art
- Credit line
- Leonard C. Hanna Jr. Fund
- Accession no.
- 1968.193
More by Kitagawa Sōsetsu 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-00009835
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