context: painting > Zen painting > Subjects

Catching Catfish With A Gourd, by Josetsu, probably early 15th C

Shigajiku

It's not fair to call this a subject, really: this was a practice that grew out of literary parties, starting from the late Fourteenth Century. An artist would be given a subject by the leader of a gathering of writers, and would paint it in the lower section of a hanging scroll (customarily taking up perhaps a third of the space), and then those assembled would write and inscribe poems in the rest of the space. This sounds as if it is downgrading the status of the artist, but some treasured paintings emerged from this way of working, and perhaps top of any such list would be Josetsu's painting shown here. The calligraphy is apparently by around 30 hands, which presumably means 30 poets, one of them the great orchid painter Bonpo.

A frequent reason for these activities was celebrating a new home for one of the group of friends, and this meant that the most regular subject was the scholar's retreat. This depiction of lovely little homes in spectacular and isolated mountain scenery had nothing to do with the actual new home, which would normally be just another house in town. The image of the scholar and/or his home atrophied and shrunk and became vestigial as pure landscape painting took over, but it still raises its head here and there through the centuries to follow.

backwards: Chinzo

forwards: Landscapes