Skip to main content
Collections Menu
SAM'S collection
Scholar's Retreat in a Bamboo Grove
Scholar's Retreat in a Bamboo Grove

Scholar's Retreat in a Bamboo Grove

Dateca. 1760-1767
Maker Yosa Buson Japanese, 1716 - 1783
School of Nanga School Japanese
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
Three Crows in Snow
Yosa Buson
Object number: 65.22
Photo: Paul Macapia
Yosa Buson
1770s
Object number: 84.9
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
Dokutan (Chin Tu-chan)
Object number: 2023.11.97
Village by Bamboo Grove
Takeuchi Seiho
ca.1887
Object number: 2009.70.10
Photo: Eduardo Calderon
Tsuji Kako
late 1910s
Object number: 2010.41.35
Landscape with Solitary Scholar
Okada Hanko
ca. 1810
Object number: 74.72
Photo: Elizabeth Mann
Shen Zhou
Object number: 49.170
Scholar Reading at a Window
School of Hokusai
ca. 1850
Object number: 39.197
Seated Scholar Reading Handscroll
Shibata Zeshin
Object number: 69.9.4