Lot 297: Ito Jakuchu (1716-1800)

Weathered skulls (Nozarashi), 1760
Sealed To Jokin in, Jakuchu koji (lay-monk Jakuchu) and Jakushoan toshoki; poem by Gekkai Gensho, signed Hachijuroku o Ko Yugai (Ko Yugai at age eighty-six) and sealed Baisa hachiju o, Yugai koji and Tsusen
Taku-hanga (rubbing-print) mounted as a hanging scroll
40 1/8 x 10 5/8in. (102 x 27cm.)

Dr. Jean Blondelet, Paris

PUBLISHED:
Kyoto National Museum, ed., Ito Jakuchu taizen/Jakuchu (Tokyo: Shogakukan, 2002), pl. 193

Weathered skulls are emblematic of the evanescence of life, a memento mori that fascinated an artist steeped in the culture of Zen Buddhism. This image of skulls is a new discovery, one of three hanging scrolls of this subject in the novel woodblock technique known as taku-hanga (rubbing-print.) The other two scrolls are in the Saienji temple in Shiga Prefecture and Hozoji, Jakuchu's family temple in Kyoto. (For an illustration of the former see Kyoto National Museum, ed., Ito Jakuchu taizen/Jakuchu, pl. 194.) According to Kano Hiroyuki, director of the Center for Information and Research at the Kyoto National Museum, the red seal and sharp impression on the scroll offered here indicate that it is the earliest and most important of the three. As for the technique, it resembles the traditional rubbing technique in which moistened paper is tamped down into the concavities of a stone or metal object. In this case, however, the initial drawing is applied directly to the wood block and "the pictorial elements of the design (rather than the background) are carved out. When the carved block has been completed, a sheet of paper is laid across it, and ink applied to the exterior surface. As a result, the designs appear in the unlinked portions of the paper, and the inked background has a dark, shining quality." (Money L. Hickman and Yasuhiro Sato, The Paintings of Jakuchu [New York: The Asia Society Galleries, 1989], p. 153.)

The inscription dated 1760 is by Gekkai Gensho (1675-1763), the influential Obaku Zen priest and connoisseur who also called himself Baisao and Ko Yugai, and who was in the final years of his life at this time. He was impressed by Jakuchu's paintings, and Jakuchu, for his part, did several portraits of the older man. Baisao was one of the foremost practitioners and advocates of Sencha, in which steeped, rather than powdered tea serves as the focus of ritual.

There are two paintings of weathered skulls and human bones in stark black and white by Jakuchu, one in the Rinkoji temple in Tokyo painted in 1760, the same year as the scroll shown here, the other, painted in 1794, in the Saifukuji, Osaka. (For an illustration of the latter see Hickman and Sato, The Paintings of Jakuchu, pl. 38.) It is likely that the printed version preceded the painting.

Jakuchu was the head of a wholesale shop in the greengrocers district of Kyoto for seventeen years, but he was by nature introverted and reclusive. In his thirties he became interested in Zen Buddhism, and the experience shaped his subsequent life. A close friend was the chief abbot of Shokokuji, one of the five great Zen temples of Kyoto. Around 1760, when Jakuchu was at the peak of his powers, he was working on his masterpiece, the set of thirty large, colorful hanging scrolls known as Doshiku sai-e (Colorful Realm of Living Beings), which he presented as a gift to Shokokuji. But at the same time he was producing paintings that relied on expressive means other than color.