Scholar's Retreat in a Bamboo Grove
ca. 1760-1767
Pictures 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.
Ink and color on paper
Overall (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)
Floyd A. Naramore Memorial Purchase Fund
74.73
Provenance: N.V. Hammer, New York; Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, Washington, 1974
