
Collection Online as of May 18, 2022
(Japanese, 1716-1783)
Hanging scroll; ink and color on paper
Painting only: 174.6 x 67.3 cm (68 3/4 x 26 1/2 in.)
Bequest of Mrs. A. Dean Perry 1997.111
not on view
Buson is recognized in Japanese literary history as one of the country's greatest poets. He was also an accomplished painter who revolutionized the 18th-century "scholar-painting" school by introducing new subject matter and a more personalized brush style. Like most literati painters who were schooled in the Chinese classics, his early paintings invariably depicted historical subjects in a precise manner. By the 1770s, however, he developed a looser, more expressive brush manner distinctly his own. Although undated, the painting's exuberant style suggests that this snow scene dates from that time. One of the artist's seals reads: "flung ink gives life to brush lines."