Page 31 - Designing_Nature_The_Rinpa_Aesthetic_in_Japanese_Art Metropolitan Museum PUB

blossoms and upper blades of leaves visible (The Cleveland
Museum of Art). Recently, a pair of hanging-scroll paint-
46
ings by Shikō, including one of exotic trees, previously

known only through black-and-white photographs pub-
lished nearly a century ago came to light (fig. 6). A mas-
terpiece of coloristic experimentation, the scrolls were

inspired by the artist’s botanical investigations of tropical
plants on the Ryūkyū Islands, in the southwest of the
Japanese archipelago.
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In contrast to Shikō’s well-documented career, the life
and work of Fukae Roshū (1699 – 1757) is shrouded in mys-

tery. He presumably had direct contact with Kōrin through
nakamura Kuranosuke, an official in the mint who was
both a close colleague of Roshū’s father (Fukae Shōzaemon)

and a prominent patron of Kōrin’s. Regardless of how the
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introduction was made, in Roshū’s relatively rare surviving
works we can see an unmistakable indebtedness to early
Rinpa priorities of reducing landscape elements to broad,
flat expanses of color, an effect he modulated with dap-

pling using the tarashikomi technique. Roshū was a tal-

Fig. 6 Watanabe shikō (1683 – 1755). Flowering Plants, edo period (1615 – 1868), early ented painter of flower subjects, but of greater interest are
18th century. pair of hanging scrolls; ink and color on paper. private collection his treatments of literary themes imbued with the archaic

flavor of Sōtatsu, including depictions of the “Mount Utsu”
and to the nijō family of courtiers, and like nearly every (also known as the “The Ivy Path”) episode from The Ise
other artist discussed here he learned how to handle a Stories, which he memorably depicted in at least three sur-
brush under the tutelage of Kano painters, in his case viving screen versions. Although unsigned, a fan painting
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from Yamamoto Soken (one of Kōrin’s mentors) and now in the Burke Collection (cat. 2) has been traditionally

Tsuruzawa Tanzan (1655 – 1729). He later became capti- attributed to Roshū based on stylistic comparisons with
vated with the Rinpa aesthetic as form ulated by Kōrin, these screens, and there is, furthermore, an undeniable
yet throughout his career Shikō worked in a variety of resonance with Sōtatsu’s version of the same theme a

styles, and many of his surviving works remain faithful century before.
to the Kano spirit of Chinese-inspired brushwork. In an
innovative homage, Shikō rendered Kōrin’s Irises screens,
sans plank bridge, enveloped in golden mist, with only the
a history of rinpa

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