This evocative painting by Bokushō is a variation on a celebrated landscape in the haboku (splashed-ink) technique by the great master Sesshū Tōyō (1420–1506), which is now in the Tokyo National Museum. The technique, in which dark ink is applied rapidly over still‑wet, light washes to create a soft, diffused effect, with neither well‑defined contour lines nor explicit details, evokes an intuitive and contemplative mindset associated with Zen Buddhist spiritual practice. The artist Bokushō, a high‑ranking Rinzai Zen monk, also achieved renown in literary circles in Kyoto and later moved to western Honshū, where he befriended the famed ink painter Sesshū.
The abbreviated, mist-laden scene is also reminiscent of the work of the thirteenth-century Chinese artist Yujian, whose ink landscape paintings were much admired in Japan.
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牧松周省筆 破墨山水図
Title:Splashed-Ink Landscape
Artist:Bokushō Shūshō (Japanese, active late 15th–early 16th century)
Period:Muromachi period (1392–1573)
Date:early 16th century
Culture:Japan
Medium:Hanging scroll; ink on paper
Dimensions:Image: 31 1/2 × 13 3/8 in. (80 × 33.9 cm) Overall with mounting: 59 13/16 × 14 3/16 in. (152 × 36 cm) Overall with knobs: 59 13/16 × 16 1/16 in. (152 × 40.8 cm)
Classification:Paintings
Credit Line:Mary Griggs Burke Collection, Gift of the Mary and Jackson Burke Foundation, 2015
Object Number:2015.300.55
With broad strokes of wet ink and a few dotlike strokes of darkest ink accentuating an otherwise muted surface, Bokushō creates an intimate, evocative composition. A precipice hangs precariously over a river valley. Distant mountains enveloped in mist rise behind a lush growth of trees and a group of lightly sketched houses, the stillness broken only by two small figures, a traveler crossing a bridge in the foreground and at the right a man trudging up the mountain path.
The painting is a variation on a celebrated landscape in the haboku (splashed ink) technique by Sesshū (1420–1506), now in the Tokyo National Museum. In his use of haboku, Sesshū was himself paying homage to the work of the thirteenth-century Chinese master Yujian, whose landscape series Eight Views of the Xiao and Xiang Rivers was much admired in Muromachi Japan (see cat. no. 64). Sesshū's original was given by the master to his pupil Sōen as a farewell gift in 1495.
Bokushō's interpretation lacks the architectonic structure of Sesshū's composition, and it is more lyrical than other haboku paintings by followers of Sesshū. In these ways Bokushō looked back past Sesshū to Yujian. In his subtle realization of the haboku technique, using neither contour lines nor explicit details, Bokushō captures rhe essence of the Zen spirit.
A noted scholar-poet of the late fifteenth–early sixteenth century, Bokushō Shusho was a high-ranking Zen monk at Nanzenji and Shōkokuji, two of the most prestigious Zen temples in Kyoto. Late in his life he lived at Hōjuji (Yamaguchi Prefecture), at the western end of Honshū, where Sesshū also settled after leaving Kyoto. Thar the two men were close friends is documented by Bokushō's inscription on a painting by Sesshū now in the Ōhara collection, Okayama; it is also possible that Bokushō studied painting with Sesshū.
[Miyeko Murase 2000, Bridge of Dreams]
Signature: Seal: Bokushō
[ Muraguchi Shirō , Japan, until 1972; sold to Burke]; Mary and Jackson Burke Foundation , New York (1972–2015; donated to MMA)
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Japanese Art: Selections from the Mary and Jackson Burke Collection," November 7, 1975–January 4, 1976.
Princeton University Art Museum. "Japanese Ink Paintings from American Collections," April 25, 1976–June 13, 1976.
Seattle Art Museum. "Japanese Art: Selections from the Mary and Jackson Burke Collection," March 10–May 1, 1977.
Minneapolis Institute of Arts. "Japanese Art: Selections from the Mary and Jackson Burke Collection," June 1–July 17, 1977.
New York. Asia Society. "Art of Japan: Selections from the Burke Collection, pts. I and II," October 2, 1986–February 22, 1987.
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Japanese Ink Paintings from the Collection of Mary and Jackson Burke," February 15–June 25, 1989.
Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt. "Die Kunst des Alten Japan: Meisterwerke aus der Mary and Jackson Burke Collection," September 16, 1990–November 18, 1990.
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Masterpieces of Japanese Art from The Mary Griggs Burke Collection," March 30–June 25, 2000.
Minneapolis Institute of Arts. "Post-renovation opening exhibition: Japanese galleries," April 11, 2006–January 17, 2007.
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Celebrating the Arts of Japan: The Mary Griggs Burke Collection," October 20, 2015–May 14, 2017.
Murase, Miyeko, Il Kim, Shi-yee Liu, Gratia Williams Nakahashi, Stephanie Wada, Soyoung Lee, and David Sensabaugh. Art Through a Lifetime: The Mary Griggs Burke Collection. Vol. 1, Japanese Paintings, Printed Works, Calligraphy. [New York]: Mary and Jackson Burke Foundation, [2013], p. 89, cat. no. 111.
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