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Unfolding Beauty

Exhibition Highlights

Highlights on View August 14 – September 16


<I>Seventy-Two Peaks Against the Blue Sky,</I> 1785
Matsumura Goshun (1752-1811)
Seventy-Two Peaks Against the Blue Sky, 1785
Edo period (1615-1868)
Eight-fold screen; ink with gold and silver foil on paper
Andrew R. and Martha Holden Jennings Fund 1980.28

Focus: The Art of Matsumura Goshun

Matsumura Goshun differs from most 18th-century artists in that he enjoyed popular success throughout his entire career. His talent for painting was recognized early, nurtured, and then supported by his patrons and teachers alike. The master painter and poet Yosa Buson (1716-1783) in particular fostered Goshun's career among Kyoto's wealthy art patrons, praising him as "a young, major artist" in about 1780.

In 1785 Buson's ill health prompted Goshun to return briefly to Kyoto from the Osaka area where he had gone to live in 1781. Then Goshun met Maruyama Õkyo (1733-1795) whose byõbu are featured in the first rotation of this exhibition. Õkyo's painting style evidently impressed Goshun, for in 1786 he decided to settle in Kyoto and pursue Õkyo's more vivid, "realistic" style of painting. Although the two became friends and collaborated on paintings, Goshun's mature style actually represents a creative fusion of his earlier and later modes of representation into his own, distinctive voice.

The size of this byõbu reflects its use in a small tea-ceremony room where it would have concealed tea preparation utensils from view. At the same time, it would enliven the room's atmosphere through its very presence, which would have been carefully orchestrated by the host to coordinate with objects nearby.
<I>Seventy-Two Peaks Against the Blue Sky,</I> 1785
Two features of the screen distinguish it: the use of an eight-fold format and a "split" background surface of parallel silver and gold foils applied to the support papers underneath. The resulting visual effect is one of muted brilliance that resonates with the thick naturalistic brushwork describing a distant, imaginary mountain range. Goshun's facility with the brush came from his study of Chinese-style ink painting, here made wholly Japanese in function and appearance.


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