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Your galleryOath of the Peach Garden, from Romance of the Three Kingdoms
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Look at Liu Bei standing calmly at left, then at the two men facing him across the table, and up at the pink peach blossom in the branches.
Three men swear brotherhood among flowering peach trees: Liu Bei at left, Guan Yu and Zhang Fei at right. The scene is a turning point in Romance of the Three Kingdoms, a Chinese novel of the 1300s set at the end of the Han dynasty; their vow was to die on the same day, though not born on the same day. After a Japanese translation appeared around 1690, the story became hugely popular in Japan.
hanging scroll; ink and color on silk · Image: 28.2 x 25.2 cm · Cleveland Museum of Art
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Details and source
- Museum title
- Oath of the Peach Garden, from Romance of the Three Kingdoms
- Artist
- Matsumura Goshun (Japanese, 1752–1811)
- Date
- c. 1780
- Medium
- hanging scroll; ink and color on silk
- Dimensions
- Image: 28.2 x 25.2 cm (11 1/8 x 9 15/16 in.); Including mounting: 114.3 x 44.2 cm (45 x 17 3/8 in.)
- Credit line
- John L. Severance Fund
- Image license
- CC0 1.0 · Public domain
- Museum record
- Cleveland Museum of Art
Artist’s life 1752–1811
View in the AtlasGaller’s rooms and hanging scale are imagined. The image is the museum’s original digital reproduction.