The Sand-Carrying Festival (Sunamochi Matsuri)
Medium
hanging scroll; ink and color on silk
Dimensions
painting only: 128.6 × 56.5 cm · including mounting: 193.7 × 77.5 cm
Classification
Painting
Department
Japanese Art
Museum
Cleveland Museum of Art
Credit
Kelvin Smith Fund
Accession Number
1991.44
Tags
About this artwork
Dredging waterways to preserve their function once required the cooperation of large numbers of people, seen at the top of this painting. Sand-carrying festivals were historically associated with religious rites or gathering alms to construct places of worship, and involved not only the labor of collecting sand from rivers but also parades and performances marking the event. Kyoto’s Kamo River has been dredged many times over the centuries, including in 1856, the year this image was made. Althou...