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In Mie Prefectural Art Museum, a set of four fusuma painting depicting a four-panel screen, signed Shohaku but of disputed authenticity,
Chinese sages, deer, and a crane, with three of the seals also seen that shows an earlier stage of the story: Zhangliang, riding on the
on the present lot, and a hanging scroll showing the Meandering head of a dragon, returns a shoe that Huangshigong has thrown into
Stream at Lanting, dated 1804 (see http://www.bunka.pref.mie.lg.jp/ a rocky gorge as a test of the warrior’s resolve and determination.
art-museum/); In the present lot Zhangliang gets his reward as Huangshigong,
transformed from a ferocious old man into a placid young scholar with
A painting of a man and horse (or men and horses) in the Arai Shrine, the precious scroll tucked behind his sleeve, kneels before Zhangliang,
Hyogo Prefecture (referred to in the Fuchu Art Museum catalogue entry transformed from the somewhat submissive figure depicted in the
cited above); earlier episode into an imposing, sword-wielding warrior; for the Tokyo
National Museum screen, see http://webarchives.tnm.jp/imgsearch/
A hanging scroll of Gama Sennin in the Museum of Fine Arts, show/C0049559; also reproduced in Kyoto National Museum, Soga
Boston misdated on the MFA website to the early eighteenth century Shohaku (Shohaku Show), exhibition catalogue, 2005, cat. no.72.
(inv. no. 11.6976).
Although the connection between the Tokyo National Museum screen
The scene from early Chinese history depicted here is Huangshigong’s and the present lot is not clear, given that the screens are respectively
gift of a scroll of military strategy to Zhangliang, a warrior-retainer the right and left halves of a pair of screens, it is possible that
of the founder of the Han dynasty, Gao Zu (reigned 202-195 BC). Shogetsu’s screen was once accompanied by a right-hand screen that
Although this episode is not seen in any extant painting by Shogetsu’s showed the earlier episode of the return of the shoe.
master Shohaku, the collections of Tokyo National Museum include
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