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self-promotion, since the works it contains resemble Hōitsu’s studio. Although not particularly famous in his
Hōchū’s overly soft, watery style of rendering flowers day, Koson, along with Hōitsu and Kiitsu, was one of the

and figures more than Kōrin’s. most talented manipulators of brush and ink of the Edo
The career of Tawaraya Sōri (active late 18th century) Rinpa movement. His deep knowledge of tea ceremony
is another example of an artist, like Hōchū, who was active and waka poetry was reflective of a cultural refinement
in the late eighteenth century and became a “Rinpa school” that comes through in his paintings. In the sublimity of

artist through encounters with the works of previous its ink expression, Koson’s depiction of cypresses (cat. 65),
generations, not direct affiliation with the workshop of a for example, made at the end of the Edo period, compares
Rinpa master. He first studied with Sumiyoshi Hiromori favorably with much earlier Edo-period masterpieces of
(1705 – 1777), official painter for the shogunate, and must atmospheric ink painting. In it we see a culmination of
have had direct access to works by Sōtatsu and Kōrin, Rinpa ink technique as well as an awareness of the

since printed manuals featuring their works had not yet realism typical of the Maruyama-Shijō school, whose
been published. Surviving works by Sōri are few and far adherents combined Western spatial concepts and sketch-
between, but he was a talented artist deserving of more ing from life with Chinese ink and wash techniques.

attention. He mastered the art of layering wet ink and Indeed, Koson’s oeuvre anticipates the best of nihonga,
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pigments in the tarashikomi technique, as demonstrated in which would likewise marshal punctilious brushwork to
works such Morning Glories, where an array of blossoms atmospheric effect.
in ink and pale blue pigment is elegantly disposed across Surveying the careers of Koson and the other late

the surface (cat. 95). Edo-period artists now categorized under the rubric of
Sakai Ōho (1808 – 1841), son of a Buddhist monk, was Rinpa, it is remarkable that almost none had any direct
adopted by Sakai Hōitsu and trained directly under his contact or ancestral connection to ogata Kōrin, the
supervision. He left behind few signed works, but like master whose name the school now borrows. And while

Hōchū and other Rinpa adherents of the early nineteenth most trained as young men in the orthodox styles of the
century Ōho made exaggerated use of tarashikomi, Kano and Tosa schools and learned from woodblock-
demonstrating how this single technique, one of many in printed painting manuals — whether reprints of Chinese
the Rinpa manual, became a defining characteristic of the examples or ones based on works by Japanese artists —
aesthetic. Among Ōho’s surviving paintings are unusual ultimately they all discovered that conventional

handscrolls that are just a couple of inches in height, approaches to brushwork appealed less to them than
including an exquisite miniature composition on the the more abstract and exuberant experimentation
traditional poetic theme of the Mu-Tamagawa, or Six of Kōrin’s style.

Jewel Rivers (cat. 38).
The last major Rinpa artist to be introduced here, Ikeda designing nature
Koson (1802 – 1867), was born in rural Echigo province, in
northwest Japan, but moved to Edo, where he joined

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