CATALOGUE OF FREER COLLECTION 19 



JAPANESE PAINTERS. 



HONNAMI KOYETSU. Born 1556. Died 1637. 



In the beginning of the seventeenth century there appeared in Kyoto a 

 lacquerer of uncommon talent, Koyetsu Honnami, who, by virtue of his 

 ability in caligraphy and painting, invented a style of lacquering of un- 

 usual merit. In the quality of designs and of technique no other produc- 

 tions can bear comparison with his, for Koyetsu 's art was the joint product 

 of his high personality and his varied accomplishments in literature, paint- 

 ing, the Chanoyu, and even in landscape gardening. Koyetsu, among 

 many other innovations in lacquer work, brought in the use of tin, lead, and 

 mother-of-pearl. Highly accomplished as Koyetsu was in the lacquering 

 art, it after all was to him a mere diversion of his leisure hoiu-s, for his chief 

 duty was to examine and judge old swords, an occupation of considerable 

 importance in ancient times. For this reason he did not leave behind him 

 very many productions, and this fact accounts for the rarity of genuine 

 pieces from his hand. Of whom he first learned the art is past finding out, 

 though it is known that in ceramics he received instruction from Koho. 

 The Kokka. 



TAWARAYA SOTATSU. Bom 1623. Died 1685. 



With Koyetsu is associated another man of genius, his friend Sotatsu. 

 The two sometimes worked together on a single makemono, Koyetsu adding 

 specimens of his beautiful writing to Sotatsu 's paintings. Little is known 

 of Sotatsu 's life, but his works reveal a consummate genius for design. 

 Among all the eminent flower-painters of Japan he stands, in the estimation 

 of his countrymen, supreme. * * * Technically he was an innovation. 

 He mixed gold with his Chinese ink, adding a hidden luster and rare gleam 

 to grey and black. The leaves of his flowers are often veined with gold. 

 He was fond of effacing the ground; we see shoots of bamboo and young 

 fern fronds springing up from space. His typical masterpieces are screens 

 overlaid with gold or silver leaf, on which the pigment is gorgeously in- 

 crusted. Yet his magnificence of color, which loves broad spaces of lapis 

 blue, and exults in crimsons, emerald, and purple, keeps always a stately 

 dignity; a marvelous sense of measure holds all the elements of his art in 

 balance. Binyon. 



OGATA KORIN. Bom 1640. Died 1716. 



Korin was related to Koyetsu in that his grandmother was the elder sister 

 of the latter. Korin 's grandfather had been in hard circumstances before 

 he tiuTied out to be a dry -goods merchant, but at the time of the birth of our 

 artistic genius his father was driving a prosperous trade. The latter was a 

 man of considerable culttire, having mastered the secrets of caligraphy under 

 Koyetsu, an uncle on his wife's side. Though born of a mercantile family, 

 Korin did not succeed to his father's trade, but instead chose painting as his 

 life work. He studied art, some say under Yasunobu Kano, but according 



