Wild Horses

Yosa Buson

Edo

Kyoto National Museum

A six-panel screen painting depicts several horses and foals in a natural landscape with trees, rocks, and a stream. One horse is white, while others are shades of brown and grey. According to an anecdote, the poet-painter Yosa Buson (1716-1783) wanted to paint a series of screens on high-quality satin silk (J., nume ). This being very expensive, Buson’s disciples organized a screen-painting group to support such a production, thus allowing the master to paint twelve pairs of screens. This set of six-panel screens is thought to have been among these works. Stylistically, the influence of the Chinese Qing-dynasty (c. 1644-1912) painter, Shen Nanping (fl. late-17th to mid-18th c.), who came to Japan and had a large following in the mid-Edo period (1616-1867), figures prominently in this painting.