Ogata Kōrin
Master of the irises.
Ogata Kōrin was the son of a textile merchant and renewed the Rinpa style. He painted screens and designed lacquer and textile patterns.
Ogata Kōrin was born in Kyoto in 1658. His family ran the Kariganeya, a distinguished textile business that supplied fabrics to the empress and the high aristocracy. The family was distantly related to Hon'ami Kōetsu. Kōrin grew up surrounded by beautiful fabrics, the tea ceremony and Noh theatre, and was taught to paint in the style of the Kanō school.
When his father died, Kōrin and his brother inherited a large fortune, but Kōrin lived extravagantly and squandered the money. He then began painting to support himself. His younger brother Ogata Kenzan became a renowned potter, and the brothers worked together: Kōrin painted motifs on Kenzan's ceramic dishes. In 1701 Kōrin received an honorary title, and for a few years he worked in Edo, present-day Tokyo, before returning to Kyoto. He died in 1716.
Kōrin drew inspiration from Sōtatsu and developed the Rinpa style further. His best-known work is Irises, a pair of six-panel screens in the Nezu Museum in Tokyo, probably from the early 18th century. Blue and green irises stand in clusters against a field of gold. He used something close to stencils to repeat the flowers, so that they form a rhythm like a textile pattern. The image alludes to a famous episode in the classical Tales of Ise. Another masterpiece is the pair of screens Red and White Plum Blossoms in the MOA Museum of Art in Atami, where a stylised stream flows between two trees.
Kōrin also made lacquerware, fans and textile designs. His stylised waves, plum blossoms and irises became so popular that they were known as Kōrin patterns and were used on kimonos and objects on a large scale.
A century after his death the painter Sakai Hōitsu revived interest in him, and it is after Kōrin that Rinpa is named. His decorative, simplified visual language has also influenced European Art Nouveau and modern design.