Album of Precious Works from Famous Early Modern Calligraphers and Painters (Volume 1)

1833

From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art

Dominant colour

Album of Precious Works from Famous Early Modern Calligraphers and Painters (Volume 1) is a 1833 by Unknown, a Romanticism work, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.

Who painted this?: Unknown
When & what style?: 1833 · Romanticism
Where can I see it?: Cleveland Museum of Art

About this work

You’re looking at an old book of hand-painted pages—each one a small artwork with brush-written poems and tiny landscapes. The pages are bound together in an album, like a sketchbook from long ago. This isn’t just art; it’s a collaboration. Japanese artists from the 1800s wrote poems in Chinese and added their own paintings. The first page even has a note from Rai San’yō, a well-known writer at the time. It’s like a group text in ink and paper. To see more art from this time, look up japan, edo period (1615–1868).

The story of this work

Overview

This is the first of two albums boxed together with an external title reading Famous Early Modern Calligraphers and Painters. It begins with a lengthy inscription in Chinese by the Japanese artist Rai San'yō (1780–1832) dated to 1817, and concludes with another, undated, by Tanomura Chikuden (1777–1835). In between, there are undated poems in Chinese by other Japanese artists, Nukina Kaioku (1778–1863), Rai Shunpū (1753–1825), Rai Kyōhei (1756–1834), and Kan Sazan (1748–1827), as well as paintings by Okada Hankō (1782–1845), Totoki Baigai (1749-1804), Nakabayashi Chikutō (1776-1853), Uragami…

Read the full account in the museum source.