Stag amid Autumn Flowers
On loan to The Met
This work of art is currently on loan to the museum.In the Japanese poetic tradition, waka (thirty-one-syllable court verse) often invokes the image of a solitary deer traipsing through fallen leaves or autumn flowers as a metaphor for lost love. Here, a lonesome-seeming stag has paused on a moonlit evening, as if to listen for the call of its mate. The grasses, leaves, and white fujibakama flowers (Eupatorium japonicum), associated with mid-autumn in Japanese poetry, are rendered in the naturalistic yet still decorative style of the Maruyama-Shijō school. Sosen built his reputation on realistic depictions of monkeys, deer, and other animals. His fame was so closely tied to his monkey paintings that in 1807 he changed the first character of his art name, so 祖, meaning “ancestor,” to the homophonic so 狙, meaning “monkey.”
Artwork Details
- 森祖仙筆 秋草に鹿図
- Title: Stag amid Autumn Flowers
- Artist: Mori Sosen (Japanese, 1747–1821)
- Period: Edo period (1615–1868)
- Date: before 1807
- Culture: Japan
- Medium: Hanging scroll; ink and color on silk
- Dimensions: Image: 40 3/8 × 15 1/16 in. (102.5 × 38.3 cm)
Overall with knobs: 73 5/8 × 22 15/16 in. (187 × 58.2 cm)
Overall with mounting: 73 5/8 × 21 1/8 in. (187 × 53.7 cm) - Classification: Paintings
- Credit Line: Fishbein-Bender Collection, Promised Gift of T. Richard Fishbein and Estelle P. Bender
- Object Number: L.2019.10.11a, b
- Curatorial Department: Asian Art