Lot 190: Ito Jakuchu (1716-1800)

Suibokuyu (The pleasure of ink)
Sealed Tobei, To Chugin in and Jakuchu koji, titled by Musen Jozen (d. 1764), sealed Jozen no in and two other seals, title cartouche (shown on this page) by rubbing-print technique titled Suibokuyu and sealed Tobeian
Handscroll; ink on paper and takuhanga (rubbing print)
12 1/8 x 222 3/8in. (30.9 x 564.6cm.)

Kyoto National Museum, "Jakuchu: Tokubetsu tenrankai botsugo nihyakunen kinen/Jakuchu: Special Exhibition 200th Anniversary of Jakuchu's death," 2000.10.24-11.26

Shizuoka Prefectural Museum of Art, "Jakuchu to Kyo no gakatachi/Jakuchu and the artists in Kyoto," 2005.2.5-3.13

PUBLISHED:
Kyoto National Museum, ed., Jakuchu: Tokubetsu tenrankai botsugo nihyakunen kinen/Jakuchu: Special Exhibition 200th Anniversary of Jakuchu's death (Kyoto: Kyoto National Musuem, 2000), pl. 143.

Kano Hiroyuki, Ino no gaka Ito Jakuchu (Eccentric painter, Ito Jakuchu), Geijutsu Shincho (November 2000): pp. 34, 36.

Kyoto National Museum and Shogakukan, eds., Ito Jakuchu taizen (Complete works of Ito Jakuchu) (Tokyo: Shogakukan, 2002), pl. 197.

Shizuoka Prefectural Museum of Art, ed., Jakuchu to Kyo no gakatachi/Jakuchu and the artists in Kyoto (Shizuoka: Shizuoka Prefectural Museum of Art, 2005), pl. 8.

Jakuchu painted two well-known handscrolls, this one and one in color on silk depicting vegetables and insects (Saichufu) in the collection of the Yoshizawa Memorial Museum of Art, Kuzuu, Tochigi Prefecture. Both are masterpieces dating from the last decade of his life. Although known as an eccentric and an individualist, Jakuchu shows himself here as the confident, seasoned master of ink monochrome painting. The composition, a spare and bold abstraction, progresses from a delicate blossoming plum tree and cuckoos of early spring to a stylized rooster and hen (one of the artist's favorite themes), a lush peony, a lily and iris of summer, autumn chrysanthemums, and, finally, mandarin ducks on a pond in winter.

Appropriately titled "pleasure of ink," Jakuchu displays the full range of his technical virtuosity, using absorbent paper for soft-edged, velvety forms that contrast with split-brushed strokes in "flying white." One of his signature techniques is the use of a sliver of negative space to encircle and set off forms such as the feathers of the hen.

The colophon by Daiten Kenjo (1718-1801), a Rinzai-sect Zen monk at Shokokuji Temple, Kyoto, consists of three pages from Genpo yoka (Collection of plants), an album of rubbing impressions by Jakuchu dating from 1768. The frontispiece with title by Musen Jozen (1693-1764), an Obaku-sect Zen monk who had a close relationship with Jakuchu and who died in 1764, is also a rubbing impression (takuhanga). It is unclear when or why these two printed works were added to the present scroll.