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Gazing at a Waterfall
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art. Free to download, adapt and use — no permission needed.
About this work
Artist Tani Bunchō painted this image in a mountain pavilion during winter. He inscribed it with two lines of a poem: “The stone cliff of layered rocks is extremely high. Waterfalls tumbling from the skies reverberate in the clouds.” The scholarly figure and attendant carrying his qin (a stringed instrument) are set amid majestically soaring mountains in China. For many people in Japan at the time, the image would call to mind a poem about a waterfall at Mount Lu by Chinese poet Li Bai (701–762).
Cleveland Museum of Art’s own descriptionCredit lineGazing at a Waterfall (観瀑図), 1790. Tani Bunchō (Japanese, 1763–1841). Hanging scroll; ink and color on silk; painting: 112.5 x 51.1 cm (44 5/16 x 20 1/8 in.); mounted: 214 x 54.5 cm (84 1/4 x 21 7/16 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, John L. Severance Fund, 1972.16
