Spring Cleaning
Yokoi Kinkoku Japanese
Not on view
As spring returns to the mountains, men sweep the gardens and repair the thatched roofs of a creekside residence in this painting by the Nanga artist Yokoi Kinkoku. Much of what we know about Kinkoku's life and career can be gleaned from his autobiography, the Kinkoku Dōjin go-ichidai ki. Born in Ōtsu, a town near Kyoto on the shores of Lake Biwa in Ōmi Province, Kinkoku became a Buddhist monk as a young man and in adulthood practiced extreme austerities as a follower of the syncretic Shugendō sect. Traveling widely and never tied to a single teacher, Kinkoku drew from a variety of sources for his painting but is most closely associated with the great Yosa Buson (1716–1783), whose influence is apparent throughout Kinkoku's body of work. Although he never actually studied directly with Buson, so close to Buson's style was Kinkoku's that he gained the nickname "Buson of Ōmi Province" (Ōmi Buson). This work by Kinkoku is in fact a copy of a painting created by Buson in 1774, although its greater sense of spontaneity and untrammeled brushwork, characteristic of Kinkoku's mature works, differentiate it from the earlier work.
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