Page 20 - Designing_Nature_The_Rinpa_Aesthetic_in_Japanese_Art Metropolitan Museum PUB

experiments with this type of ink painting, but no one was name — is an important first step in distinguishing the stu-
as successful as Sōtatsu in conveying the vitality and inner dio’s different hands. The screens in the Metropolitan
essence of the animal subject, and none controlled his brush Museum’s collection titled Moon and Autumn Grasses, for
and the gradated effects of ink as expertly as the master. example, are signed “Sōtatsu Hokkyō” and impressed with

seals reading “Taiseiken,” but in this case the screens are
paintings of the so¯tatsu studio believed to be the work of either a skillful painter in the mas-
The details of how the Sōtatsu studio functioned and who ter’s circle or an immediate follower, not Sōtatsu himself
assisted the master can never be known, especially consid- (cat. 77). Also among works bearing the Taiseiken seal is
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ering how little we know about the head of the workshop a masterful screen painting of scenes from The Tale of
himself. Yamane Yūzō devoted his career as an art historian Genji (cat. 3). Here we can observe how the stiff punctili-
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trying to sort out the varied output of Sōtatsu and his ousness of the Tosa school, which had made a subspecialty
studio; he also attempted to bring order to the plethora of of Genji paintings, has given way to a looser style of render-

surviving works either in the Sōtatsu style or that bear a ing human figures and natural forms. The outlines of
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signature or seal associated with the workshop. How his garments have a more sinuous flow, and trees and clouds
foundational research will be modified by future scholars have become amorphous. In the scene from the “Wisps of
with access to an even greater range of material remains to Cloud” (Usugumo) chapter (see detail on p. 43), note how

be seen, but the singling out of the painters who used the the artist used the characteristic tropes of pine trees on a designing nature
“I’nen” seal in the mid-1630s and the “Taiseiken” seal in rounded mountain with the sun setting in the background
the late 1630s and 1640s — both associated with the Sōtatsu to evoke the idealized world of the ancient tales.

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