Tawaraya Sōtatsu
Founder of the Rinpa school.
Tawaraya Sōtatsu ran a painting workshop in Kyoto and created a decorative style in gold and bright colours. Wind God and Thunder God is his best-known work.
Tawaraya Sōtatsu was born around 1570 and died around 1640. Very little is known about his life. He ran a workshop in Kyoto, the Tawaraya, which made and decorated fans, paper and screens for the city's wealthy merchants and the court nobility. The workshop was known for its beautifully painted fans.
Sōtatsu collaborated with the calligrapher Hon'ami Kōetsu. He painted motifs in gold and silver, such as cranes, deer and flowers, on long paper scrolls on which Kōetsu then wrote poems. In 1602 he took part in restoring a famous set of illustrated sutras from the 12th century at the Itsukushima Shrine, which brought him into contact with the older art of the Heian period.
He renewed native Japanese painting, yamato-e, with large simplified forms, strong colours and gold grounds. He developed the technique of tarashikomi, in which a new colour or ink is dripped into a layer that is still wet. The colours run together and form soft, unpredictable patterns. His subjects often came from classical literature, such as The Tale of Genji.
His best-known work is Wind God and Thunder God, a pair of screens belonging to the temple Kennin-ji in Kyoto and now kept at the Kyoto National Museum. The two gods float on clouds against an empty field of gold, with a wide space between them. The image has both humour and power. The screens Waves at Matsushima are in the Freer Gallery of Art in Washington.
Sōtatsu is regarded as the founder of the decorative Rinpa tradition, which took its name from Ogata Kōrin. Kōrin and later Sakai Hōitsu copied Wind God and Thunder God, and the three versions show how Rinpa was passed on from generation to generation without any direct relationship between teacher and pupil.