Artwork story
About Musk Cat
The artist and artwork
Musk Cat is a Japanese hanging scroll from the mid- to late sixteenth century, painted in ink and color on paper by the obscure artist Uto Gyoshi. A fluffy black-and-white civet pauses beside a red camellia while a titmouse fusses from a willow branch overhead. The compact encounter combines careful animal observation with the disciplined brushwork and decorative clarity associated with painters trained around the influential Kano-school tradition.
The world around it
The scroll was made near the end of the Muromachi period, when decades of civil conflict were giving way to campaigns of political reunification. Military rulers, temples, court circles, and wealthy merchants all supported workshops, and Kano-trained painters adapted Chinese ink traditions to Japanese formats and tastes. The image’s quiet late-winter moment contrasts with that unsettled political world, while its imported subject reflects cultural exchange with China that had shaped Japanese painting for centuries.
A detail to notice
The animal is not an ordinary house cat. Musk cats, or civets, are not native to Japan; artists knew them through Chinese paintings imported from at least the thirteenth century. The Met also notes a large square seal naming Uto Gyoshi and connects him to a satellite Kano studio in the eastern castle town of Odawara. The seal preserves an otherwise elusive artist’s identity, while the annoyed bird gives the dignified exotic animal a surprisingly comic companion.
Look closer: materials, scale, and subjects
The recorded object is hanging scroll made in Hanging scroll; ink and color on paper and held in the Asian Art department.
Recorded dimensions include Image: 29 15/16 × 18 5/16 in. (76 × 46.5 cm); Overall with mounting: 66 1/8 × 24 1/8 in. (168 × 61.3 cm); Overall with knobs: 66 1/8 × 25 7/8 in. (168 × 65.8 cm).
Subject terms include Animals, Birds, and Flowers. Treat them as guideposts, not a complete interpretation.
Collection history and public-domain source
The collection credit line is Mary Griggs Burke Collection, Gift of the Mary and Jackson Burke Foundation, 2015.
The individual artwork page and official image were verified as Public Domain on 2026-08-23.
No Context Gallery independently uses the public-domain image. The source museum has not endorsed, sponsored, or affiliated itself with these products.
Research sources
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