Emperor Yao Visiting Yu Chonghua
1604
unspecified
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
About the artist
1604
unspecified
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
Emperor Yao Visiting Yu Chonghua is a 1604 unspecified by Kusumi Morikage, a Baroque work, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
You see a folding screen with two men in flowing robes walking through misty hills. One is an emperor; the other, his future successor. The story comes from ancient China, but the artist painted it in Japan during the Edo period. Look at the soft, wavy lines of the trees and rocks—nothing stiff or formal. That playful touch was Morikage’s signature, even when he painted serious subjects. To see more of this style, look up *japan, edo period (1615–1868)*.
One of a pair, this screen shows a section of the narrative of how the Chinese Emperor Yao (about 2356–2255 BC) selected his successor, Yu Chonghua (about 2294– 2184 BC), who would become Emperor Shun. The artist who painted this screen, Kusumi Morikage, trained with Kano Tan’yō (1602–1647), painter-in-residence to Japan’s shogun, the country’s ruler, and was one of his four top students. Despite the conservative subject matter, Morikage’s distinctive sensibility shines through in his playful treatment of the gray and white elephants in the far left panel of the composition. According to…
The emperor's two-wheeled carriage sits in front of a thatched-roof farmhouse.
Read the full account in the museum source.
