Boundlessly Free and Content
Hashimoto Dokuzan was a leading figure in early twentieth-century Zen Buddhism, serving as abbot of the major monastery Shōkokuji in the city of Kyoto and served as chief, kanchō, of the Shōkokuji branch of the Rinzai sect of Zen from 1909 to 1933. Before he entered the priesthood, he trained to be a painter under the celebrated literati artist Tomioka Tessai and continued to paint throughout his life. The present worked shows a lone Chinese man in a deep woods, leaning over the railing of a stone bridge to gaze at rushing stream below—a scene of communion with nature that East Asian painters have turned to and reinterpreted for a thousand years. Painted entirely in ink, Hashimoto contrasts the dry, detailed brushwork of the figure, bridge, and the foreground landscape motifs with soft wet dots in a range of dilute ink for the trees’ dense foliage.
Artwork Details
- 曠然自適図 (Kōnen jiteki zu)
- Title: Boundlessly Free and Content
- Artist: Hashimoto Dokuzan 橋本獨山 (Japanese, 1868–1938)
- Date: early 20th century
- Culture: Japan
- Medium: Hanging scroll; ink on paper
- Dimensions: Image: 78 15/16 × 27 3/16 in. (200.5 × 69 cm)
Overall with mounting: 98 5/8 × 33 1/4 in. (250.5 × 84.5 cm)
Overall with knobs: 98 5/8 × 38 3/4 in. (250.5 × 98.4 cm) - Classification: Paintings
- Credit Line: Mary and Cheney Cowles Collection, Gift of Mary and Cheney Cowles, 2021
- Object Number: 2021.398.27
- Curatorial Department: Asian Art
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