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Entertainment Scene
About the Artwork
This painting captures the moment when a high-ranking courtesan accompanied by two trainees makes her grand entrance into a salon. The guest of honor, a samurai who reclines beneath a striped robe while dangling his fan, turns from the musical entertainment to gaze at the spectacle of her arrival. The fortunes of everyone in the room depend on how she orchestrates the rest of the evening, as the more the samurai spends on her services, the more trickles down to the other entertainers who are present.
Inscriptions
artist's signature and seal lower left
Provenance
?–1985: (Kenzaburo Marui, Osaka, Japan, sold to the Cleveland Museum of Art) 1985–: The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH
Exhibition history
Year in Review for 1984. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (April 3-May 5, 1985). Byobu: The Art of the Japanese Screen. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (December 8, 1987-January 10, 1988). 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). Admired from Afar: Masterworks of Japanese Painting from the Cleveland Museum of Art. Tokyo National Museum, Tokyo, Japan (January 15-February 23, 2014); Kyushu National Museum, Fukuoka, Japan (July 8-August 31, 2014). Japan’s Floating World 日本の浮世. The Cleveland Museum of Art (organizer) (April 8-October 9, 2022).
Quick Overview
- Artist
- Miyagawa Chōshun (Japanese, 1683–1753)
- Date
- c. 1710–53
- Medium
- hanging scroll; ink and color on silk
- Dimensions
- Image: 56.4 x 135.5 cm (22 3/16 x 53 3/8 in.); Overall: 175 x 144.7 cm (68 7/8 x 56 15/16 in.); with knobs: 175 x 154.9 cm (68 7/8 x 61 in.)
- Type
- Painting
- Classification
- Painting
- Department
- Japanese Art
- Credit line
- Leonard C. Hanna Jr. Fund
- Accession no.
- 1985.17
More by Miyagawa Choshun 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-00009927
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