Mountain landscape with scholar and servant on a path

Nanga painter and haiku poet Kinkoku was a Jodo (Pure Land) Buddhist monk by the age of nine, living in a temple in Osaka and Tokyo before becoming head priest of Gokurakuji on Mount Kinkoku, from which he took his artistic name. After the temple was destroyed by fire in 1788, Kinkoku traveled as an itinerant priest and painter. He was a disciple of Yosa Buson (1716–1784). This landscape exemplifies the maturity of Kinkoku’s painting style when he turned to mountain subject matters after a pilgrimage to Mount Omine in 1804. The style of painting was probably influenced by his teacher Yosa Buson, who also painted a handscroll of The Pinnacles of Mount Omei based on a poem by Tang dynasty poet Li Ba. Although both the composition and brushworks of the painting clearly demonstrate its Chinese influences, especially the literati painting tradition of the Yuan and Ming periods, the bold use of both long and short hemp fiber strokes by Kinkoku created not only dramatic mountain surfaces and a splendid landscape, but also a unique personal style. (“Tradition, Transmission, and Transformation in East Asian Art,” curated by Cornell PhD student Yuhua Ding under the supervision of Ellen Avril and presented at the Johnson Museum January 23-June 12, 2016)