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Your galleryPuppies, Sparrows, and Chrysanthemums
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- What catches your attention?
- Where does your eye go next?
- What would you ask about this work?
Show me
Look at how much bare paper Rosetsu leaves around the three sparrows, then find the pale ring at right where hands once slid the door.
In Japanese rooms, sliding doors divided the space, and their paintings could set the mood of a room as well as decorate it. This panel is almost empty: three sparrows fly across the bare paper. The pale circle at right is where a door pull sat, and the Cleveland Museum of Art points out the dark halo of dirt and finger oils that surrounds such marks.
Fusuma panel remounted as a hanging scroll; ink and slight color on paper · Overall: 211.4 x 94 cm · Cleveland Museum of Art
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Details and source
- Museum title
- Puppies, Sparrows, and Chrysanthemums
- Artist
- Nagasawa Rosetsu (Japanese, 1754–1799)
- Date
- c. 1792–94
- Medium
- Fusuma panel remounted as a hanging scroll; ink and slight color on paper
- Dimensions
- Overall: 211.4 x 94 cm (83 1/4 x 37 in.); Painted surface: 167.6 x 91.5 cm (66 x 36 in.)
- Credit line
- John L. Severance Fund
- Image license
- CC0 1.0 · Public domain
- Museum record
- Cleveland Museum of Art
Artist’s life 1754–1799
View in the AtlasGaller’s rooms and hanging scale are imagined. The image is the museum’s original digital reproduction.