This
painting, called White Heron on a Snowy Willow (雪の柳に白鷺), was created by Sōami (相阿弥) in the mid-15th early 16th century. This painting is ink on paper presented as a
hanging scroll 6’ x 1’ 9”. Sōami painted
landscapes in the service of the Ashikaga Shogunate the supposed creators of
the rock garden of Ginkaku-ji. Sōami was
known as a Doboshu, or an official that decorated the surrounding of groups
such as the Shogun to ensure positive karma or good will towards the
Shogun. Unlike many of Sōami’s colleagues
Sōami used an art style that more closely corresponded with China’s Southern
School. These styles included the use of
negative space to paint. Negative space painting means that the picture that
the artist wants the viewer to see is the un-painted part of the paper where
the surroundings are shaded in. In this
painting Sōami shades in the background and the underside, a Japanese ink style
known as haboku (broken ink), of the tree to leave the negative image of
the tree and the bird as the focus of the painting. The Smithsonian’s Museums of Asian Art
describes this painting as follows:
“The form of a gnarled willow branch and
white heron emerge subtly against a pale gray sky. Contour lines and explicit definition
of form are almost entirely absent from this painting. By painting only the
"negative" areas, such as the sky and the underside of the branch,
the white paper itself is made to indicate the positive forms of the heron and
snow. The ghostly form of the heron is defined almost entirely by
"negative wash," the tinting of the area around the bird. The limb of
the willow is represented by a few broad, rough strokes of ink along the
underside, a dynamic technique known as haboku (broken ink) that was introduced
into Japanese ink painting during the late 15th century. Only the black ink of
the eye, beak, and legs of the heron provide sharp accents within the
predominantly pale tonality.
The
painter, Soami, was especially admired for his mastery of ink wash, the
technique used almost exclusively in this painting. Soami served the Ashikaga
shogun as one of the doboshu, a special group of advisors on aesthetic
matters. Because of his expertise concerning Chinese works of art, Soami was
responsible for the care and classification of the shoguns'extensive
collections of Chinese paintings, ceramics, and other antiquities which had
been in formation since the 14th century. Although he had a privileged
familiarity with this extensive private collection of Chinese antiquities,
Soami expressed in his ink paintings a distinctly Japanese sensibility that
prefigures the renascence of Japanese aesthetics in the arts of the Momoyama
period (1573–1615). The majority of Soami's surviving paintings are landscapes,
some of very large scale for sliding doors. This scroll of more intimate scale
demonstrates the artist's mastery and control of ink wash and brush techniques
as well as his ability to create an emotive image, deeply evocative of
stillness and solitude. “ - The Smithsonian’s Museums of Asian Art
Sources:
http://www.uni-marburg.de/fb03/ivk/mjr/pdfs/2013/articles/hisamatsu_2013.pdf
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