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Photograph © The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
41
ArtistJapanese, 1749–1835
Japanese

Shadow Daruma

1825
Hanging scroll; ink on paper
Image: 39 5/16 × 11 in. (99.9 × 27.9 cm) Scroll: 67 × 14 × 1 1/4 in. (170.2 × 35.6 × 3.2 cm) Storage box: 14 11/16 × 2 1/8 × 2 3/8 in. (37.3 × 5.4 × 6 cm)
The Gitter-Yelen Collection, museum purchase funded by the Brown Foundation Accessions Endowment Fund
2021.224
ProvenanceResearch Ongoing

“Shadow Daruma by Gōchō. At first glimpse he appears only dimly, but get closer and you will sense his presence. At high noon, you become one with him, but in the setting sun you seem to go separate ways. Proceed on until there is no more trace. When the mouth is opened there will be a voice. If you fear the dark and ask for help, he will make the moon illuminate the night, pure and bright.”1                                                                        

Gōchō’s inscription reveals that, although this appears to be simply Daruma seen from behind, the viewer is seeing not Daruma but his shadow, which remained on the cave wall following his nine-year meditation.

 

—Bradley Bailey

Notes

1. Lisa E. Rotondo-McCord and Tadashi Kobayashi, An Enduring Vision: 17th–20th-century Japanese Painting from the Gitter-Yelen Collection (New Orleans: New Orleans Museum of Art, 2002), 293. Adapted from the translation by John Stevens.