Page 365 - Edo: Art in Japan, 1615–1868

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2O9 • This pair of screens was probably to work, calling this painting futures
Yosa Buson (1716-1783) created as a prize for a lotterylike organization the "Screen Society"
Landscape "screen on the month club." In 1764, (Byôbukô).
when they were painted, Buson, a late
Dated 1764 The earliest of the Screen Society
Pair of six-panel screens; ink bloomer, was forty-eight years old paintings, depicting a herd of horses
and light color on satin and just starting to emerge as a major in the colorful, detailed, mimetic style
3
Right 144.2 x 319 (s6 Ax 12572); talent, although these works still of the Nagasaki school, dates to 1763.
3
3
left 144.2 x 354 (56 /4 x 139 /s) betray a certain immaturity. He had Always practical, Buson must have
Kyoto National Museum returned to Kyoto from a peripatetic found the production of such expen-
Important Art Object life, married, settled in a fashionable sive, labor intensive products too bur-
area, and was the central figure in a densome, because by the following
group of haikai poets. But he needed year, when this and several other lot-
money. So he and his disciples hit tery screen paintings were produced
upon a scheme in order, he claimed, (see also cat. 202), he was increas-
to procure the expensive materials
such as the silk with which he wished