Preliminary Drawing of Three Deer Mounted on a Hanging-scroll Painting of Flowering Bush Clover
Ogata Kōrin Japanese
Suzuki Kiitsu Japanese
Not on view
The simple but animated sketch of three deer is by Ogata Kōrin, the great Kyoko painter who was at his peak in the early eighteenth century, and the spontaneously brushed painting of bush clover surrounding it is by Suzuki Kiitsu, who was active in Edo (present-day Tokyo) a century later. Neither is a fully consummated or polished work by the respective artists, yet what this delightful collaborative composition signifies is how artists working under the rubric of Rinpa—literally, “the school of Kōrin”—looked back on the work of their predecessors for inspiration. Kiitsu and the patron who commissioned the work were paying homage to Kōrin—the Rinpa artist who inspired Kiitsu and his teacher Sakai Hōitsu to revive the painting style established by Tawaraya Sōtatsu of two centuries before. Kiitsu had entered Hōitsu’s studio in 1813, just two years before the two artists commemorated the centenary of Kōrin’s death by publishing One Hundred Paintings of Kōrin (Kōrin hyakuzu), and this work is probably from around that time.
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