14 Japanese Art


Te Petit Palais in Paris is showing, for the first time in Europe, the series of 30 hanging scrolls entitled Doshoku sai-e (Te Colourful Kingdom of Living Beings) in its entirety, painted by the Japanese painter Ito Jakuchu between 1757 and 1766. It comprises a complete world of flora and fauna – a pictorial survey of ‘Living Beings’, both mythical and actual. Tis series is also considered to be one of the masterpieces of Japanese painting. According to the guest curator of the National Gallery of Art exhibition in 2012, Yukio Lippit, Professor of Japanese art, Harvard University said that ‘It stands as one of the most virtuosic and visually dynamic – yet at the same time interiorised and distilled – expressions of the natural world in all of Japanese art’. Active in the middle of the 18th


century, during the Edo period (1603- 1868), Jakuchu is much appreciated in Japan for his subtle brushwork and use of vivid colours. Te complete series has only ever been shown once outside Japan – at the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC, in 2012. And this series of hanging scrolls is considered his masterpiece. Because of their extreme fragility the works are on show for just a month, as part of the Japonismes 2018 season and opens on 15 September. Ito Jakuchu (1716–1800) is


less


well-known to the public in Europe, however, he is regarded by many as one to be one of Japan’s greatest artists. Jakuchu started life as a grocer in Kyoto (he took over his father’s business), but at the age of 40 he decided to hand over the business to his brother to devote himself to painting, which had been a passion since childhood.


Black Rooster and Nandin (1765) by Ito Jakuchu, from Te Museum of Imperial Collections (Sannomaru Shozokan), Tokyo


JAKUCHU


The Colourful Kingdom of Living Beings


extraordinary place to live in the 18th- century,


Kyoto was an especially creative and where artisans produced


high-quality ceramics and textiles, created innovative architecture and garden spaces, and fashioned refined objects for use in everyday life, including items from cooking utensils to articles of personal adornment. Some of the highest artistic achievements can be seen in the painting and calligraphy of the time. Artists not only studied and mastered the various traditions (such as the painters of the Kano school), but they also felt an unprecedented freedom to explore new directions and create completely new types of work. Ito Jakuchu’s work reflects this period of blossoming creative independence. By pursuing new styles, techniques, and visions and by disregarding the traditional artistic norms of the period, new schools of painting were created and new patrons were eager to acquire these radically different works. However, contemporaneous art critics, who were more used to seeing the Eastern decorative tradition and perspectives,


regarded the artists


strange or ‘odd’ (ki). Tis meaning, or observation, can also be extended to include ‘individualist’,


‘expressionist’,


or even ‘eccentric’. Tree painters who were working in a new painting style at this time are now classified as ‘Te Tree Eccentrics of Edo Painting’ (kijin) – Ito Jakuchu, Soga Shohaku, and Nagasawa Rosetsu (see pages 6 and 7 of this issue). However, Jakuchu was merely ‘eccentric’ in the sense of being reclusive. Te artist had strong ties to Buddhism, and became interested in Zen in his thirties, when he took the lay Buddhist vows. In 1757, as a recognised artist, he


started to work on Te Colourful Kingdom of Living Beings – pictures of animals and plants whose realism and precision were rooted in a close and deep observation of his subject matter. Tese 30 scrolls – portrayals including cocks, fish, peacocks, phoenixes, ducks and trees in flower – reveal an astonishing delicacy of line and vividness of colour, extraordinary


talent and


allied to an technical


mastery. Te outstanding feature of this remarkable series is its combining of all the silk painting techniques – and enormous attention to


Application of paint on both sides of the fabric, the absence of outlining, use of both mineral and natural pigments – Ito Jakuchu blended all these complex techniques with enormous ingenuity


detail.


and control. In White Phoenix and Old Pine, the use of ochre on the back of the silk enables the suggestion of a gold background, without having the need to use it. Te red-and-white, male-female bird alights on a pine while chattering to a smaller bird in the pine needles above it as the red sun begins to rise, with a flowering creeper curling through the old pine tree. In Mandarin Ducks in Snow, the scroll is a striking example of capturing snow with an accuracy that depicts not only the physical character of snow, but its unique texture. His portrayals of the living world, whether animal or vegetable


overflow with


including those most difficult to catch with the naked eye. Te result of endless hours of acute observation, these meticulous images point to a great affection for his subject matter. Jakuchu also transcends reality by his creativity to portray a remarkable world of painterly imagination. Te combination of mystery and


reason is particularly pronounced in this series. In each scroll, there is a sense of the equal importance of all things great and small, and of the necessity to look at everything – including an obligation on the viewer to scrutinise the paintings – from near and far. In each painting there is a sense of something going on that cannot be explained. In Fish and Octopus, a baby octopus clings to the adult’s tentacle, whilst glum looking fish go about their business. Everything in the painting, including Jakuchu’s strange rocks, seems organic. In many of the scrolls, Jakuchu presents nature and painting as movement, transformation and sudden enlightenment,


including a very


common theme in his work– roosters and chickens – which he painted with obvious delight and extraordinary life- like characteristics, as can be seen in Black Rooster and Nandin from 1765. Jakuchu’s piety meant that Buddhism was the core of his existence. Even before the 30 scrolls


were


completed, he had decided to donate them to the Shokoku-ji


temple in


Kyoto, together with his Buddhist paintings, Shaka Sanzon-zo (Sakyamuni triptych). Tis religious series, representing the Buddha and two bodhisattvas was painted by Jakuchu to give a divine focus to the other paintings in the temple setting. In the interest of preservation the


monastery donated the Colourful Realm series


of paintings to the Japanese Imperial Household in 1889,


details,


Roses and Birds (1765) by Ito Jakuchu, from Te Museum of Imperial Collections (Sannomaru Shozokan), Tokyo


ASIAN ART SEPTEMBER 2018


Shellfish (1765) by Ito Jakuchu, from Te Museum of Imperial Collections (Sannomaru Shozokan), Tokyo


White Phoenix and Old Pine (1766) by Ito Jakuchu, from Te Museum of Imperial Collections (Sannomaru Shozokan), Tokyo


Fish and Octopus (1766) by Ito Jakuchu, from Te Museum of Imperial Collections (Sannomaru Shozokan), Tokyo


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