|
Oguri Sotan [Sukeshige; Kojiro; Jiboku]
(b 1413; d 1481). Japanese Zen monk and painter. He was ordained at the age of 30 at the temple Shokokuji in Heian (now Kyoto). Although no extant paintings can be certainly attributed to Sotan, his biography suggests that he was one of the more important painters of the mid-15th century in Japan. He was renowned in his lifetime for his ink paintings (suibokuga), and for his polychrome bird-and-flower paintings (kachoga), which, according to contemporary records and works assigned to Sotan, were remarkable for their animation and their vibrant colours. Records of the Ashikaga shogunate (Muromachi period: 1333–1568) show that he was retained by the shogunate as a semi-professional artist and that in 1463 he took over the official stipend previously paid to his teacher, TENSHO SHUBUN, of Shokokuji. Other documents reveal that he received commissions to paint fusuma (sliding-door panels) at a number of temples and villas in the 1460s and 1470s. Sotan is supposed to have worked in the manner of Shubun as well as in the broad, ‘boneless’ (Jap. mokkotsu) style associated with the influential Song-period (AD 960–1279) painter MUQI, to whom his art name Jiboku (‘himself a Muqi’) paid deference. The series of 28 fusuma painted for the Yotokuin, a subtemple of Daitokuji (Kyoto, N. Mus.), completed by Sotan’s son Sokei in 1489, may have been begun by Sotan: their styles are thought to be indistinguishable. Sotan was succeeded by his sons Sokei and Soritsu, who is known by his sobriquet, Geiai.
|
|
There are more than 45,000 articles in The Grove Dictionary of Art.
To access the rest of this article, including the bibliography, subscribe to
www.groveart.com.
To find out more about this subject, click on a related article below and
subscribe to www.groveart.com
|
