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Scenes from Essays in Idleness
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art. Free to download, adapt and use — no permission needed.
About this work
Matsumura Goshun inscribed passages from Buddhist monk Yoshida Kenkō’s (1283–1350) well-known collection of anecdotes, Essays in Idleness, across the top of the panels of this screen and its pair. Goshun illustrated the narratives with his vision of the figures who feature in them. The texts cascade down from right to left, forming unique compositional relationships with the images below. The episodes offer a veritable portrait of human idiosyncrasy, from one man’s deep faith in radishes to another’s inability to avoid nicknames.
Cleveland Museum of Art’s own descriptionCredit lineScenes from Essays in Idleness (徒然草図屏風), late 1700s–early 1800s. Matsumura Goshun (Japanese, 1752–1811). One of a pair of six-panel folding screens; ink and color on paper; image: 146.5 x 330.7 cm (57 11/16 x 130 3/16 in.); overall: 170.2 x 375.8 cm (67 x 147 15/16 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Andrew R. and Martha Holden Jennings Fund, 1971.43.2
