Artist: Kaihō Yūshō
Technique: Paper
Based on a verse entitled the “Eight Drunken Hermits,” by the Chinese Tang poet Du Fu (712–770), this screen depicts four hermits drinking, and presumably its paired screen (now lost) showed the other four. Kaihō Yūshō’s (1533–1615) special method of depicting people using minimal brush strokes emulates the “sketch style” (Ch. xie yi, J. genpitsutai) of the Southern Song painter Liang Kai (1130–1210) and in Japan was dubbed, “bag figure brushwork” (J. fukuro jinbutsu). This amazing piece is a quintessential example of sumi-e, or ink painting. The inked strokes rhythmically punctuate the energetic movement in the picture; intensity flows from the forms; the expressions of the drunks are individualistically delineated; and framing these, the rocks and pine tree have a rounded softness created through the effective use of shading. From the inscription on the left side, one can infer that Kamei Korenori (1557–1612), lord of Kano castle in Inaba province (modern Tottori prefecture), commissioned this screen on the third day of the tenth month in 1602 (Keichō 7). Since very few of Yūshō’s paintings have verifiable production dates, this screen provides a valuable standard for establishing the dating of his other works.
Artist |
|
|---|---|
Download |
|
Permissions |
Free for non commercial use. See below. |
 |
This image (or other media file) is in the public domain because its copyright has expired. However - you may not use this image for commercial purposes and you may not alter the image or remove the watermark. This applies to the United States, Canada, the European Union and those countries with a copyright term of life of the author plus 70 years.
|
Note that a few countries have copyright terms longer than 70 years: Mexico has 100 years, Colombia has 80 years, and Guatemala and Samoa have 75 years. This image may
not be in the public domain in these countries, which moreover do not implement the
