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Your galleryGazing at a Waterfall
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Find the scholar in white and the boy carrying his qin on the ledge, then trace the two thin waterfalls, one high at right and one at lower left.
Tani Bunchō painted this scene in 1790, in a mountain pavilion in winter, and wrote at upper left two lines of a poem: a cliff of stacked rocks towers high, and waterfalls tumbling from the sky echo in the clouds. A scholar and his attendant, who carries a qin, a stringed instrument, stand among soaring Chinese mountains. Many in Japan would have thought of Li Bai’s poem on a waterfall at Mount Lu.
hanging scroll; ink and color on silk · Painting: 112.5 x 51.1 cm · Cleveland Museum of Art
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Details and source
- Museum title
- Gazing at a Waterfall
- Artist
- Tani Bunchō (Japanese, 1763–1841)
- Date
- 1790
- Medium
- hanging scroll; ink and color on silk
- Dimensions
- Painting: 112.5 x 51.1 cm (44 5/16 x 20 1/8 in.); Mounted: 214 x 54.5 cm (84 1/4 x 21 7/16 in.)
- Credit line
- John L. Severance Fund
- Image license
- CC0 1.0 · Public domain
- Museum record
- Cleveland Museum of Art
Artist’s life 1763–1841
View in the AtlasGaller’s rooms and hanging scale are imagined. The image is the museum’s original digital reproduction.