HASEGAWA TOHAKU

born 1539, Nanao, Japan died March 20, 1610, Edo? [now Tokyo] Japanese painter of the Azuchi-Momoyama period (15741600) and the founder of the Hasegawa school of painting or painters. Early in his career in Noto province (now in Fukui prefecture), Hasegawa painted Buddhist pictures including Picture of Twelve Devas (Ishikawa Shokaku Temple), Portrait of Takeda Shingen (Seikei Temple of Mount Koya), and Portrait of Nawa Nagatoshi. About 1571 he moved to Kyoto and studied the painting of the Kano school of painters. He was strongly influenced by Sesshu, a 15th-century master of suiboku-ga (water-ink painting), and even named himself Sesshu V. He also studied the painting of the Sung and Yan dynasties of 10th14th-century China, becoming a master of these styles. About 1589 he painted a suiboku sansui (landscape painting in water ink) on sliding doors in the Daikoku Temple, and in 1591 he and his disciples painted the Dai-kimbeki shoheki-ga (a great wall painting with the emphasis on the colours of gold and blue) of the Shoun Temple, commissioned by chief imperial minister Toyotomi Hideyoshi for his son, who had been born prematurely and had died. Tohaku's remaining works may be divided into two styles: one is that of a free-hearted spirit, expressing the masculine and candid atmosphere of the age, represented by Picture of Flowers and Trees (Chishaku Temple) and Picture of Willow Tree and Bridge; the other style is that of kotan (elegant simplicity), expressed in black-ink paintings such as Picture of Pine Forest (Tokyo National Museum) and Picture of Monkey in Dead Trees (Ryosen Temple, part of Myoshin Temple). Having been a Nichiren-sect Buddhist, he was associated with Nittsu, the holy priest of the Honpo Temple, who recorded Tohaku's theory of painting in Tohaku ga-in (Studio of Tohaku) in the 1590s. In 1603 Tohaku was raised to the hokyo (divine bridge, one of the honourable ranks given to artists and doctors by the imperial house). Toward the end of his life, he painted figure-paintings in the black-ink style, patterned after the genpitsu-tai (literally, the style of fewest strokes) of Liang Chieh, though these works are coarse and rough.