Ito Jakuchu, The Colorful Realm of Living Beings

The Colorful Realm of Living Beings is a series of thirty scrolls painted by Japanese artist Ito Jakuchu between 1757 and 1766.

Jakuchu was born to a commercial family (they were wholesalers and owned warehouses) and would have grown up with little experience of classical Asian art. He acquired his education through his association with the Shokokuji monastery in Kyoto; the abbot, known as Daiten, was his mentor in both Zen Buddhism and traditional culture. It was Daiten who gave Ito the title he is known by; Jakuchu means "like the void." In appreciation for this teaching, Jakuchu donated the Colorful World to the monastery and it long hung in the abbot's private residence. (Love the roosters!)

The first works in the series are highly traditional, almost copies of earlier Chinese and Japanese works.

As his style matured Jakuchu experimented with new images, and some of the later works are strikingly original. Jakuchu was obviously a close observer of fish.

Back in 2012, the whole set traveled to Washington and was shown at the National Gallery of Art, part of the 100th anniversary celebration or the gift of the cherry trees that became such an important part of spring in our capital. Before they traveled the scrolls were subject to painstaking technical analysis that revealed much about the techniques of painting, the pigments used, and so on. This analysis showed that Jakuchu was also experimenting with new colors of paint, made in new ways, and with new ways of adding depth to painting on silk. Above, the Phoenix, one of the most famous images.

All of this is explained in a magnificent book that accompanied the exhibition, Colorful Realm, edited by Yukio Lippit. This is full of stunning photographs, including many magnified image that show the technique in detail. Above and at the top of the post, Cranes and Plum Blossoms.

Sparrows and Millet.

A duck and a peony. I could look at these for days.