Photo: Seiji Shirono, National Institute for Cultural Properties, Tokyo

Images(2)

White Path between Two Rivers

Date13th century

Label TextAmida Buddha is one of the Buddhas of the ten directions, and his paradise, or pure land, lies in the west. A primary goal of devotees of Pure Land Buddhism is to be reborn in the Western Paradise. This painting illustrates a man’s long and dangerous journey to reach there, as earlier described in a parable written by the Chinese monk Shandao. Divided into halves by a diagonal line, the painting's bottom half represents the secular world and the upper half the Western Paradise.

Object number56.182

Photo CreditPhoto: Seiji Shirono, National Institute for Cultural Properties, Tokyo

Exhibition HistorySan Francisco, California, M.H. de Young Memorial Museum, Treasures of Japan, 1960. Seattle, Washington, Seattle Art Museum, Japanese Art in the Seattle Art Museum, 1960. Portland, Oregon, Portland Art Museum, Gift to a City: Masterworks from the Eugene Fuller Memorial Collection in the Seattle Art Museum. Nov. 3 - 28, 1965. Cat. no. 112. New York, New York, Asia Society, Journey of Three Jewels, 1979. Seattle, Washington, Seattle Art Museum, A Thousand Cranes: Treasures of Japanese Art, Feb. 5 - July 12, 1987. Seattle, Washington, Seattle Art Museum, Five Masterpieces of Asian Art: The Story of their Conservation, May 5 - Sept. 9, 2007. Tokyo, Japan, Suntory Museum of Art, Luminous Jewels: Masterpieces of Asian Art From the Seattle Art Museum, July 25 - Sept. 6, 2009 (Kobe, Japan, Kobe City Museum, Sept. 19 - Dec. 6, 2009; Kofu, Japan, Yamanashi Prefectural Museum of Art, Dec. 23, 2009 - Feb. 28, 2010; Atami, Japan, MOA Museum of Art, Mar. 13 - May 9, 2010; Fukuoka, Japan, Fukuoka Art Museum, May 23 - July 19, 2010). Seattle, Washington, Seattle Asian Art Museum, Boundless: Stories of Asian Art, Feb. 8, 2020 - ongoing [on view Feb. 8, 2020 - Apr. 18, 2021].Published ReferencesFuller, Richard E. "Japanese Art in the Seattle Art Museum: An Historical Sketch." Seattle, WA: Seattle Art Museum, 1960 ("Presented in commemoration of the Hundredth Anniversary of Diplomatic Relations between Japan and the United States of America"), no. 56 Thomas, Edward B. "Oriental Art in the Seattle Art Museum," in Art in America, no. 1, 1965, illus. p. 49 "Gift to a City: Masterworks From the Eugene Fuller Memorial Collection in the Seattle Art Museum," Portland, OR: Portland Art Museum, 1965, no. 112. Hagen, Margaret A. "Varieties of Realism: Geometries of Representational Art." Cambridge University Press, 1986.p. 144, fig. 6.19 (b) Kawai, Masatomo, Yasuhiro Nishioka, Yukiko Sirahara, editors, "Luminous Jewels: Masterpieces of Asian Art From the Seattle Art Museum", 2009, The Yomiuri Shimbun, catalogue number 26 Nakanishi, Zukio, Editor, "The Dictionary of Priest Shoku, a disciple of Honen", Publisher, Tokyodo Shuppan, 2011, scholarly publication written in Japanese, print run 1500 New York, New York, Asia Society, "Journey of Three Jewels," cat., 1979 (1979), no. 38 Mayuyama, Junkichi. "Japanese Art in the West," (1966), no. 90 Szostak, John D. "Two Paths to the Pure Land: The Niga-byakudō Theme and the Modernist Buddhist Art of Hada Teruo," in Archives of Asian Art, Vol. 57 (2007), pp. 121-150, p. 123, fig. 3 ten Grotennuis, Elizabeth. "Visions of a Transcendent Realm: Pure Land Images in the Cleveland Museum of Art," in The BUlletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art, Vol. 78 No. 7 )Nov 1991), p. 274-300. Wong, Dorothy C. "Four Sichuan Buddhist Steles and the Beginnings of Pure Land Imagery in China," in Archives of Asian Art, Vol. 51, (1998/1999), pp. 56-79; p. 68, fig. 13 Sano, M, M. Kasuya, S. Figujiwara, Editors; "The Matrix of Medieval Painting II", 2014, pg. 376 Yamamoto, Satomi. A Genealogy of Imagery in Medieval Buddhist Paintings. Tokyo: Yoshikawakobunkan, 2020; p. 115, reproduced fig. 26. Foong, Ping, Xiaojin Wu, and Darielle Mason. "An Asian Art Museum Transformed." Orientations vol. 51, no. 3 (May/June 2020): pp. 55-56, reproduced fig. 14.

Credit LineMargaret E. Fuller Purchase Fund

Dimensions32 3/8 x 15 11/16 in. (82.2 x 39.8 cm) Overall: 63 3/8 x 21 716 in. (161.0 x 54.4 cm)

MediumHanging scroll; ink, color and gold on silk