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context: painting > great schools > rimpa
Tawaraya Sotatsu ?-1643
This brilliant artist who came from a Tosa background, is generally regarded as the founder of the 'school', but it's pretty hard (and purposeless) to make any meaningful such claims. He was a hugely varied and creative painter - the image on the Rimpa page up one from here uses the tarashikomi, ink on wet paper, technique that he invented, where the ink is allowed to soak and pool into the paper, to produce many interesting effects.
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Matsushima screens, by Sotatsu
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The image on this page is completely different, and is another astonishing piece. In case you are wondering, it's a pine tree branch up top, some solid golden cloud, then three islands in the sea. You will notice that they all seem to be viewed from different angles of elevation - the one on the left is seen from directly above, as far as I can tell. I'm not going to claim that he invented cubism three centuries ahead of time, because that isn't what is going on here, but it is a genuinely extraordinary piece of work. It does remind me more of Cezanne in some ways.
His work with Koetsu, subject of the previous page in this section, was his most beautiful, I think - see an image from their collaboration.