Past Exhibitions

Chinese Paintings Admired by Japanese Literati of the Edo Period
August 23, 2016 - October 2, 2016

This exhibition, which accompanies the feature exhibition Yosa Buson, focuses on Chinese paintings that inspired literati painters in the Edo period (1615–1868). Yosa Buson (1716–1784) and other Japanese literati (also bunjin—“cultivated people”) of his day had great admiration for Chinese ideals of amateurism, free-spiritedness, and scholarly seclusion within the midst of a busy urban environment. The Chinese literati paintings that such artists used as their models were not the centuries-old paintings of the Song and Yuan dynasties but instead the contemporary Ming and Qing paintings that were circulating through Japanese society at the time. Such works featured paler colors and a lighter touch than their earlier counterparts. This exhibition includes Chinese paintings copied in homage to the old masters as well as other paintings believed to have inspired Buson's work.

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