Orchid Pavilion Gathering
1777
unspecified
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
1777
unspecified
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
Orchid Pavilion Gathering is a 1777 unspecified by Soga Shōhaku, a Nihonga work, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
You see a long scroll crowded with scholars in robes, cups floating down a stream, and ink poems hanging from trees. This painting isn’t about China—it’s about Japan. The artist swapped Chinese faces for Japanese ones and set the scene in an Edo-period garden. The party happened in 353, but Shōhaku painted it in 1777, turning history into a daydream. Look up *Japan, Edo period (1615–1868)* to see more scrolls like this.
This painting depicts a famous gathering that took place in China in AD 353 to celebrate the Spring Purification Festival, also known as the Double Third Festival, as it takes place on the third day of the third lunar month. The host invited everyone to the Orchid Pavilion to compose poetry and drink wine. Guests floated wine cups down a nearby creek, and where they landed, people had to drink the wine and compose a poem.
The Buddhist temple Bairinji in Kurume City, Fukuoka prefecture, Japan, and the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne, Australia, own compositions by the same artist on the same theme.
Read the full account in the museum source.
Shōhaku spent his life in Kyoto, the creative heart of Japan, where he painted scrolls and screens that looked nothing like the soft landscapes of his day.
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