On loan to The Met The Met accepts temporary loans of art both for short-term exhibitions and for long-term display in its galleries.
Herb Gatherers in the Mountains
Yosa Buson Japanese
Not on view
A gray-bearded man in a green cloak and cloth cap riding a horse along a mountain path is accompanied by a younger assistant on foot, both equipped with tools for gathering plants. Though the artist shows only a small cross section of the landscape, he effectively conveys a setting deep in the mountains, his punctilious brushwork rendering the diverse textures of the rocky crags and the ancient pine tree. Figures in remote rustic settings appear often in East Asian literature and art to represent the virtues of an unfettered life, or to serve as allegories for banished officials living in exile. Here, however, we can assume that the mounted man is a scholar-doctor searching for medicinal herbs. The idea of Daoist “herb gatherers” dates back to ancient China, and the subject was popularized by the legend of the sage-doctors Liu Chen and Ruan Zhao, who, in search of medicinal herbs, scaled Mount Tiantai, a sacred mountain in Zhejiang, China.
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