Autumn Flowers in a Bamboo Basket
Yosa Buson Japanese
Not on view
An informal bouquet of autumn flowers stands in a tall Chinese-style bamboo basket with an elegant rounded handle. Chrysanthemums (kiku), Chinese bellflowers (kikyō), and rose mallows (fuyō) are all associated in traditional Japanese poetry with autumn, their season of full bloom. The Nanga-school artist Yosa Buson styles himself “Chōkō” in his signature, indicating that he painted this in his mid- to late forties. He used a technique for rendering the flowers called sumi-nijimi, or “ink blurring,” in which the artist applies brushstrokes to the surface of ink washes before they have dried, creating an evocative, soft texturing effect. This contrasts with the short horizontal strokes in dark ink used to convey the texture of the plaited bamboo.
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