Gazing at a Waterfall
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).
Colors in this work
Details
- Date
- 1790
- Dimensions
- painting: height 1.125 m, width 0.511 m; mounted: height 2.14 m, width 0.545 m; overall with knobs and cord: height 2.178 m, width 0.602 m; knob diam: height 0.027 m
- Department
- Japanese Art
- Holding institution
- Cleveland Museum of Art
- Palette
-
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- Image provider
- cleveland-museum-of-art
- License
- CC0-1.0
- Credit
- John L. Severance Fund
Art Genome Taxonomy
10 tags
Subject Matter
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Landscapes and Waterscapes Visual · 99%
The composition is dominated by towering cliffs, layered peaks, trees, and several cascading waterfalls.
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Figures in Nature Visual · 98%
Two small human figures are placed within the mountainous terrain, serving as a scale-bearing presence rather than as isolated portrait subjects.
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Haze Visual · 92%
Pale atmospheric passages and blank spaces separate foreground cliffs from distant mountain forms, producing a visibly hazy spatial effect.
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Text Both · 99%
A vertical inscription is clearly visible in the upper-left portion of the image, and the catalog identifies it as two lines of poetry concerning rocky cliffs and waterfalls.
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Related to Literature Both · 96%
The visible inscription and the catalog’s identification of the verses and their association with Li Bai establish a direct connection to literary sources.
Visual Qualities
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Earth Tones Visual · 94%
The painting uses subdued tan, brown, gray-green, and muted blue-green tones across the rocks, vegetation, and atmospheric distance.
Medium and Techniques
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Hanging Scroll Both · 99%
The work is presented in a tall vertical format, and the catalog identifies it as a hanging scroll in ink and color on silk.
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East Asian Ink-and-Wash Painting Both · 96%
Visible brushwork, ink-based tonal modeling, and restrained washes correspond to the catalog description of ink and color on silk.
Time Periods
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18th Century Art Metadata · 99%
The Cleveland Museum of Art dates the work to 1790.
Geographic Regions
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Japanese Art Metadata · 99%
The catalog identifies the artist as Japanese and the place of origin as Japan during the Edo period.
Source & rights
Tani Bunchō (Japanese, 1763–1841). Gazing at a Waterfall. Cleveland Museum of Art.
High-resolution sources
- Original TIFF ↗ 2,977 × 6,505 · Cleveland Museum Of Art · Available