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context: painting > Zen painting > Artists
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Reading in the Bamboo Studio |
Shubun
He was the pupil of Josetsu and the master of Sesshu, and arguably Japan's first genuinely great landscape painter, in the early 15th Century. He was certainly seen as a huge influence and had many followers, but he was really a channel for very specific influences from China. He learned the specified brushstrokes very thoroughly, and passed the rules on to many generations of Japanese artist. His work most closely resembles my favourite Chinese painter Xia Gui, from 200 years earlier.
The painting here is a shigajiku - the full image is about three times as high, the rest taken up by calligraphy by six monks. The title gives away that it is from that most popular genre of the form, the scholar's retreat, a fantasy home in an idealised landscape. We have the stereotyped, standardised brushstrokes that he took from great Chinese Song dynasty landscape painters, but like Bonpo on the previous page, there is a sense that Shubun is more focussed on the negative space implied by the rocks than Xia Gui ever was.