Hasegawa Tōhaku (1539 – 1610)
Nationality | Japanese |
Where Artist Lived | Nanao, Japan |
Associated Movements | Hasegawa School |
Famous Artworks | Maple (1593) Pine Trees and Flowering Plants (1593) Pine Trees (1595) |
Hasegawa Tōhaku was born in 1539 in the town of Nanao, Japan. He started his career as an artist by painting pictures of Buddha in his hometown and became successful enough to be a professional painter by his twenties. By his mid-30s, he had moved to Kyoto to study further at the highly respected Kanō school. Many of Tōhaku’s early works are in the style taught by this school.
After his studies at the Kanō school, Hasegawa Tōhaku began to develop his unique style of “Sumi-e” painting, which mimicked the styles of his minimalist predecessors.
Hasegawa Tōhaku was considered the fifth successor of the master Sesshū Tōyō and a master of the Azuchi-Momoyama period, along with his rival Kanō Eitoku. Tōhaku was respected throughout Japan for his incredible Japanese art and many of his works have been listed as national treasures in Japan.
- Pine tree and flowering plants (1593) by Hasegawa Tōhaku; Hasegawa Tōhaku, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Pine Trees (1568 – 1600)
Date | 1568 – 1600 |
Medium | Ink on paper |
Dimensions (cm) | 156 x 356 |
Where It Is Housed | Tokyo National Museum, Tokyo, Japan |
Also recognized as Shōrin-zu byōbu, this series of six screens is an exquisite example of Japanese drawing. Here, Tōhaku managed to capture light and movement with only ink as his chosen medium, allowing him to demonstrate a sense of added space, distance, and depth by applying three different layers of shading. Through his unique manipulation of brushstrokes, Tōhaku was able to create the impression of a receding landscape as one moves closer to it.
“Shōrin-zu byōbu” demonstrates the rough application of brushstrokes on the paper, which creates a powerful visual of pine trees emerging from the empty background.
- Pine Trees (1486) by Hasegawa Tōhaku; Tokyo National Museum, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
The viewer can feel the wind moving through the grove by the artist’s use of specifically placed pine trees in the composition. Tōhaku wanted to create the impression of being drawn into the painting and achieved this by adding gentle layers of ink on the foreground to create the effect of depth and distance, and enlarge the appearance of the pine trees.
