Deer in Moonlight
On loan to The Met
This work of art is currently on loan to the museum.Yosa Buson was an established poet prior to becoming a painter, and this work depicting a solitary deer under a crescent moon evokes a mood similar to some of his haikai (seventeen-syllable seasonal verse). Here, details of the deer’s fur—the small, repetitive brushstrokes, the spots in white, the prominent dark stroke down the back, and the fuzzy tail—lend a rich, textural quality. The sky, meanwhile, is rendered simply in light gray washes. The crescent moon is defined through negative space.
During the mid- to late 1760s, Buson painted many landscape screens based on Chinese Ming and Qing prototypes. He went on to develop his own distinct style in the decades that followed, producing paintings that tended toward abstraction and evocative ink washes. The current painting dates from this later phase of his career, between 1778 and 1783, when he used the signature “Painted by Shain.”
During the mid- to late 1760s, Buson painted many landscape screens based on Chinese Ming and Qing prototypes. He went on to develop his own distinct style in the decades that followed, producing paintings that tended toward abstraction and evocative ink washes. The current painting dates from this later phase of his career, between 1778 and 1783, when he used the signature “Painted by Shain.”
Artwork Details
- 与謝蕪村筆 月下孤鹿図
- Title: Deer in Moonlight
- Artist: Yosa Buson (Japanese, 1716–1783)
- Period: Edo period (1615–1868)
- Date: ca. 1778–83
- Culture: Japan
- Medium: Hanging scroll; ink and color on paper (with ivory jiku)
- Dimensions: Image: 49 × 19 3/16 in. (124.5 × 48.7 cm)
Overall with mounting: 83 × 25 in. (210.8 × 63.5 cm)
Overall with mounting: 83 × 27 1/8 in. (210.8 × 68.9 cm) - Classification: Paintings
- Credit Line: Lent by Fishbein-Bender Collection
- Object Number: L.2019.10.2a–d
- Curatorial Department: Asian Art