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Scholar's Retreat in a Bamboo Grove
Scholar's Retreat in a Bamboo Grove

Scholar's Retreat in a Bamboo Grove

Dateca. 1760-1767
Label TextPictures of men enjoying scholarly pursuits at private retreats have a long history in East Asia. In this composition by the poet and painter Yosa Buson—an early leader of the Japanese Nanga school, whose painters were inspired by Chinese painting and poetry—the scholar’s rustic, thatched-roof studio takes center stage. Deep in a grove of bamboo beneath towering peaks, Buson’s scholar leans forward at his desk to gaze outside, perhaps listening to bamboo creaking in the wind or the nearby stream gurgling. Buson captures the scholar’s environs using washes of green, ochre, and ink with lively ink brush-marks. He reserves brighter green for the scholar’s robes and some of his furnishings and vibrant blue for distant mountaintops.
Object number74.73
ProvenanceN.V. Hammer, New York; Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, Washington, 1974
Credit LineFloyd A. Naramore Memorial Purchase Fund
DimensionsOverall (incl endknobs & hanging braid): 83 × 45 in. (210.8 × 114.3 cm) Image: 39 3/4 × 12 13/16 in. (101 × 32.5 cm) Width (without endknobs): 16 5/16 in. (41.4 cm)
MediumInk and color on paper
Photo: Susan A. Cole
Japanese
early 16th century
Object number: 91.235.1
Photo: Susan A. Cole
Japanese
early 16th century
Object number: 91.235.2
Photo: Scott Leen
Object number: 2023.11.97
Village by Bamboo Grove
ca.1887
Object number: 2009.70.10
Photo: Eduardo Calderon
Tsuji Kako
late 1910s
Object number: 2010.41.35
Landscape with Solitary Scholar
ca. 1810
Object number: 74.72
Photo: Elizabeth Mann
Object number: 49.170
Scholar Reading at a Window
ca. 1850
Object number: 39.197
Photo: Elizabeth Mann
15th century
Object number: 36.12
Scholar’s rock on stand
Chinese
Object number: 92.47.326