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Preface
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art. Free to download, adapt and use — no permission needed.
About this work
Historian Rai San’yō, whose family came from Hiroshima and achieved elite samurai status from modest beginnings as textile dyers, contributed three calligraphies to these albums, including this preface, in which he explains that the albums were being assembled to show off the beauty of the landscape along Lake Biwa near Hikone Castle in central Japan. The albums also feature one leaf each by San’yō’s father, a scholar, and his two uncles, a physician and a scholar turned local government official.
Cleveland Museum of Art’s own descriptionCredit lineFamous Early Modern Calligraphers and Painters (近世名家書画冊): Preface, 1817. Rai Sanyō (Japanese, 1780–1832). Double-leaf from a pair of folding albums; ink on silk; each page: 25.9 x 18 cm (10 3/16 x 7 1/16 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Gift of Mary B. Lee, C. Bingham Blossom, Dudley S. Blossom III, Laurel B. Kovacik, and Elizabeth B. Blossom, in memory of Elizabeth B. Blossom, 1972.117.1.1
