ITO JAKUCHU (1716-1800)

Jakuchu was the head of a wholesale shop in the greengrocers district of Kyoto for seventeen years, but he was by nature introverted and reclusive. In his thirties he became interested in Zen Buddhism, and the experience shaped his subsequent life. A close friend was the chief abbot of Shokokuji, one of the five great Zen temples of Kyoto. Around 1760, when Jakuchu was at the peak of his powers, he was working on his masterpiece, the set of thirty large, colorful hanging scrolls known as Doshiku sai-e (Colorful Realm of Living Beings), which he presented as a gift to Shokokuji. But at the same time he was producing paintings that relied on expressive means other than color.
There is another, very similar painting of mendicant priests by Jakuchu, painted in 1795; see Tsuji Nobuo, Jakuchu to Buson / Seitan sanbyakunen: onaidoshi no tensai-eshi (Celebrating Two Contemporary Geniuses: Jakuchu and Buson) (Tokyo: Suntory Museum of Art and Miho Museum, 2015), no. 219.