Page 21 - Designing_Nature_The_Rinpa_Aesthetic_in_Japanese_Art Metropolitan Museum PUB

only two of Sōtatsu’s followers are known by name: A good number of paintings from the late seventeenth
Tawaraya Sōsetsu (active mid-17th century) and Kitagawa century made in the Rinpa style — many with either the
Sōsetsu (active 1639 – 50). Tawaraya Sōsetsu adopted the I’nen or Taiseiken seal — made their way to America in

character “Sō” from his master’s name, while in Kitagawa’s the early twentieth century, where they were acquired by
case the art name “Sōsetsu” is written with different char- such renowned collectors as Charles Goddard Weld (1857 –
acters. Because Tawaraya Sōsetsu inherited his master’s 1911), known for acquiring and later donating the collec-
studio name, he may have been the master’s son or younger tion of the discerning scholar Ernest F. Fenollosa (1853 – 1908)

brother (we cannot be sure). We know that he received the to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and Charles Freer
rank of Hokkyō in 1642, the year he was appointed by the (1854 – 1919), whose collection now forms the core of the Freer
powerful daimyo Maeda Toshitsune (1593 – 1658) to become Gallery of Art and the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery in Wash-
official painter for the Maeda clan, which was based in Kaga ington, D. C., part of the Smithsonian Institution. like

province. When Toshitsune’s daughter married a prince of Weld, Freer turned to Fenollosa, a pioneering Western
the Hachijō-no-miya branch of the imperial family, this writer on East Asian art, for guidance in his acquisitions.
Sōsetsu was thus called on to create sliding-door paint- Although many of Fenollosa’s tentative attributions
ings ( fusuma-e) for the prince’s residence. From such have subsequently been revised, he adroitly realized that

evidence we can deduce that patronage for the Sōtatsu Kōrin’s distinctive style had its roots in the early seven-
studio continued to come from the highest echelons of teenth century. Fenollosa mistakenly attributed many
Japanese society. unsigned paintings to the hand of Kōetsu, however,
Kitagawa Sōsetsu used the same I’nen seal as Sōtatsu whose true calling we now know was calligraphy, rather

and Tawaraya Sōsetsu, and from that we can speculate than to Sōtatsu and his followers. Arguably the most
that he likely served as the head of the Sōtatsu studio famous instance of this is the left screen of a pair now in
after his master’s death. He is believed to have worked the Metropolitan Museum’s collection (cat. 60), which is
in the Kanazawa region in the mid-seventeenth century. referred to in a caption in Fenollosa’s Epochs of Chinese

Judging from the range of brush styles of surviving works and Japanese Art as the “Magnolia Screen” and ascribed
from this period with the I’nen seal, there must have been to Kōetsu. Fenollosa praised the painting “as one of the
at least a handful of other artists permitted to use the seals finest existing screens by Koyetsu”:
closely associated with the Sōtatsu studio. The stock-in-

trade of the artists who used the I’nen seal at this time It represents the lateral flow across the six panels of a
were lavishly painted screens of flowers, plants, and trees, river in a low-toned cream and silver. The lines of this
in which, as with all Rinpa vegetal motifs, there is a har- flow are conceived on the grandest scale. . . . The
monious balance between stylization and naturalism. line tangle on the right, of magnolia, carnations, river

The plants are identifiable, but they reflect a decorative and grasses, though simpler than the corn screen
intent, since they seem completely detached from any [acquired by Charles Freer], rises in grandeur of
real landscape. 18 pure spacing to Phidias [the Athenian sculptor],
a history of rinpa

20