The 21 Artworks of Ogata Kōrin

Hotei (Chinese: Budai) is one of the most beloved characters of Zen Buddhism and is believed to be an avatar of Maitreya, the Buddha of the Future. Potbellied with a shaven head, this cheerful, blissful monk is said to have roamed the countryside in the late ninth to early tenth century in the area ...

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This writing box (J. suzuribako) is by Ogata Kôrin (1658-1716), a leading artist of the Rinpa School who carried on the approach of Hon/

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On the right-hand panel, white plum blossoms, a harbinger of spring, stand out against fine-grained wood and the stark branches of a leafless tree. The companion panel features flowers and grasses of late summer and early autumn: morning glories, pampas grasses, white and blue bellflowers, and exube...

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This painted fan, formerly used but saved with loving care and remounted as a hanging scroll, depicts blue and white Chinese bellflowers, Japan's favorite autumnal blooms. Combined with pampas grass, Chinese bellflowers succinctly express the moment when late summer passes into autumn. Although the ...

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Seiobo is the Japanese name for the Chinese Taoist immortal, Xiwangmu, the Queen Mother of the West. According to legend, the garden of her residence had trees that once every three thousand years bore the peaches of immortality—fruits that conferred longevity on all those fortunate enough to taste ...

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Many artists and poets of the East and West alike have striven to capture the transitory and fleeting image of swelling waves. Kōrin’s rendition—one of Japan’s most striking representations of this amorphous, ungraspable form—has a strangely menacing feel, due no doubt to the long, tentacle-like fin...

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The stately, vertical forms of irises set against an angular bridge that sweeps diagonally across both screens refer to an episode in The Ise Stories (Ise monogatari). Exiled from Kyoto after an affair with a high-ranking court lady, the story’s protagonist stops at Yatsuhashi, a place where a strea...

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Such propitious symbols of longevity as cranes, pines, and bamboo, shown here beneath a crescent moon, evoke the auspicious realm of the immortals. The pair subtly suggests spring and autumn through such floral motifs as azaleas, chrysanthemums, morning glories, and eulalias. The screens’ most strik...

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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...

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