UNKOKU TOGAN

born 1547 died 1618, Japan Japanese painter best remembered as a suiboku-ga (water-ink painting) artist. He worked in the manner of the 15th-century artist Sesshu at a time when the orthodox style of the Kano school dominated painting. Initially a student under a Kano artist (probably Shoei), he became familiar with the style of Sesshu while a painter to the Mori family in Suo province (now Yamaguchi prefecture). The Moris owned the most famous of Sesshu's works: a 55-foot- (17-metre-) long landscape painting from 1486. He copied this scroll painting, modeled his own style after it, and used it to back his claim in the famous legal contest with Hasegawa Tohaku over succession to the line of Sesshu. The case was won by Togan, who gained the right to call himself the fifth generation of Sesshu. One of his Sesshu-style paintings, Chinese Landscapes, is an ink landscape closely resembling the original Sesshu scroll, but it lacks the bold lines of the Sesshu landscape and has, instead, more variations in tones, creating a greater sense of atmospheric depth. A screen painting of Mount Yoshino, famous for its cherry blossoms, and The Deer are among Togan's well-known works. Most of his work is in the Daitoku Temple in Kyoto.