The Cleveland Museum of Art

Collection Online as of April 19, 2024

Horse Stable

Horse Stable

early 1500s
(1392–1573)
One of a pair of six-panel folding screens; ink, color, and gold on paper
Painting: 146.1 x 346.8 cm (57 1/2 x 136 9/16 in.); Mounted: 163.3 x 366 cm (64 5/16 x 144 1/8 in.)
Edward L. Whittemore Fund 1934.373.2
Location: not on view

Description

The size of this intriguing pair of byōbu is noteworthy because its original dimensions were different. The horizontal band of golden paper at the top was probably added between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries. What is more, comparing these screens with others depicting stable scenes suggests that the bottom may have been trimmed, seemingly bringing the viewer closer to the setting and its activities.
The impressive steeds are tethered in separate stalls beneath a cedar bark roof much like those still used in traditional Shinto shrines. Each horse is rendered as a particular animal through placement, pose, and coloration. In front of the divider posts for the stalls, which coincide with the individual panel borders, is a fascinating mélange of medieval people and animals. Arranged on and along the double band of deep green tatami mats or the brown wood veranda upon which the tatami are placed, these vignettes provide insights into the culture and society of the later Muromachi period. The horses exhibit the isolated, graceful stateliness long associated in Japan with their power and beauty, and the human figures are comfortable with one another despite their considerable age and social differences. We see stable grooms, courtiers, aged priests, a page boy, a falconer, and a young child playing with a monkey. Also conspicuous are the riding and gaming equipment, animals and birds, and especially the various styles of textiles then in vogue. Not portraits, the figures instead represent types, but they do recall the enduring Japanese interest in mirroring real people from varying social levels. This genius for expressing human wit as well as the overall abstract design sense emanates from a deep familiarity with everyday reality.
Following the earlier illuminated handscroll traditions of the Heian and Kamakura periods in which views of everyday life occupy common ground with religious and aristocratic subject matter, the stable theme represents the revival of attention to patently indigenous subject matter, executed with a palette of mineral pigments in yamato-e, the colorful native Japanese style. Such paintings stand in stark contrast to imported subject matter executed with ink washes in kara-e, or Chinese style. The Four Accomplishments (1979.46.1-2) provides a timely example of that genre, instructive in contrasting palettes, techniques, settings, and depictions of figures.
Of the byōbu known with this subject, it is currently regarded as the earliest that survives. Its author remains a mystery, as is normally the case among yamato-e artists before 1600. Nevertheless, it has a distinguished history of ownership dating back to the sixteenth-century Tokugawa family, whose paulownia crest appears in gold lacquer on a saddle in the left screen.
  • formerly in collection of Prince Tokugawa; bought for Museum by Mr. S. Yamanaka from sale of the Shima collection.
    1934-
    The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH
  • Hollis, Howard C. “A Pair of Japanese Screens.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 24, no. 1 (January 1937): 5–8, 15. Mentioned: p. 5-8; Reproduced: p. 15 www.jstor.org
    The Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art Handbook. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1958. Mentioned and Reproduced: cat. no. 920 archive.org
    Lee, Sherman E. Japanese Decorative Style. [Cleveland]: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1961. Mentioned and reproduced: pp. 36–37; cat. no. 31 archive.org
    The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1966. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1966. Reproduced: p. 279 archive.org
    The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1969. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1969. Reproduced: p. 279 archive.org
    The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1978. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1978. Reproduced: p. 377 archive.org
    Cunningham, Michael R. The Triumph of Japanese Style: 16th-Century Art in Japan. [Cleveland, Ohio]: Published by the Cleveland Museum of Art in cooperation with the Indiana University Press, 1991. Reproduced: pp. 68–69
    Tōyō kaiga no seika: tokubetsuten: Kurīvurando Bijutsukan no korekushon kara [東洋絵画の精華: 特别展: クリーヴラント美術館のコレクションから= Highlights of Asian painting from the Cleveland Museum of Art]. Nara, Japan: Nara National Museum, 1998. Reproduced: pp. 102–103, cat. no. 68
    Cunningham, Michael. "Two Exhibitions of Japanese Painting." Orientations, vol 32, number 6 (June 2001): pp. 63–68. Reproduced: pp. 66–67
    Cunningham, Michael R. Unfolding Beauty: Japanese Screens from the Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland, OH: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2001. Reproduced: pp. 8–9
    Admired from afar: masterworks of Japanese painting from the Cleveland Museum of Art [クリーブランド美術館展 : 名画でたどる日本の美 Kurīburando Bijutsukan ten: meiga de tadoru Nihon no bi ]. Tokyo: Tōkyō Kokuritsu Hakubutsukan, 2014. Reproduced: pp. 76–78, cat. no. 26
    Singer, Robert T., Masatomo Kawai, Barbara Ambros, Federico Marcon, Masaaki Arakawa, and Thomas Blenman Hare. The Life of Animals in Japanese Art. Washington, District of Columbia: National Gallery of Art; Tokyo, Japan: The Japan Foundation; Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Princeton, New Jersey: In association with Princeton University Press, 2019. Reproduced: cat. no. 171, pp. 188–189
    Koyama-Richard, Brigitte. Animaux Dans La Peinture Japonaise. Lyon: Nouvelles éditions Scala, 2020. Reproduced: pp. 162–163
    Vilbar, Sinéad. "The Japanese Art Collection of the Cleveland Museum of Art, 1915-1951." In Great Waves & Mountains: Perspectives and Discoveries in Collecting the Arts of Japan. Natsu Oyobe, and Allysa B. Peyton, eds., 160–197. Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 2022. Mentioned and Reproduced: pp. 175–177, 7.11
  • The Life of Animals in Japanese Art. National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC (organizer) (June 2-August 18, 2019).
    Admired from Afar: Masterworks of Japanese Painting from the Cleveland Museum of Art. Tokyo National Museum, Tokyo, Japan (January 15-February 23, 2014); Kyushu National Museum, Fukuoka, Japan (July 8-August 31, 2014).
    Unfolding Beauty: Japanese Screens from the Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (July 15-September 16, 2001).
    Highlights of Asian Paintings from The Cleveland Museum of Art. Nara National Museum (organizer) (February 21-March 29, 1998); Suntory Museum of Art (April 28-June 21, 1998).
    The Triumph of Japanese Style: 16th Century Art in Japan. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (October 19-December 1, 1991).
    Byobu: The Art of the Japanese Screen. The Cleveland Museum of Art (organizer) (August 1-October 14, 1984).
    Japanese Decorative Style. The Cleveland Museum of Art (August 30-October 15, 1961); The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL (November 9-December 17, 1961).
  • {{cite web|title=Horse Stable|url=false|author=|year=early 1500s|access-date=19 April 2024|publisher=Cleveland Museum of Art}}

Source URL:

https://www.clevelandart.org/art/1934.373.2