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Splashed-Ink landscape
Josui Sōen Japanese
Not on view
A mountainous landscape is rendered in the so-called splashed-ink (haboku or hatsuboku) technique, in which ink is spattered from a brush or the hand to render the feeling of volume and the texture of crags and rocks.
One of the most famous examples of a splashed-ink landscape was created in 1495 by the monk-painter Sesshū Tōyō (1420–1506). That iconic painting, now designated a National Treasure, was originally presented to Sesshū’s pupil Sōen, the artist of this work.
Sōen was a monk-painter based at Engakuji Zen monastery in Kamakura, but he had studied painting with Sesshū for about three years in Suō Province. When Sōen departed, he was presented with the famous painting as a farewell present and as a kind of certificate of spiritual and artistic accomplishment. The accompanying inscription is a quatrain of classical Chinese verse:
Mount Lu arises
nearby Thirteen Peak Mountain,
People’s houses, as if in a painting,
sit along a bend in the stream.
When will autumn winds arrive
and waters rise high enough,
So that I, donning a straw cloak,
might sail a boat all alone?
Poem by Cai Zhengfu [d. 1174]
Calligraphy and painting by Sōen
「閭山只尺十三山、曲人家畫幅間、
何日秋風半高水、小舟容我一蓑閑。
蔡正甫作・字畫一筆宗淵」
—Trans. John T. Carpenter
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