Landscape with Buildings

The tradition of ink monochrome landscape painting was brought from China to Japan by merchants and Buddhist monks in the thirteenth or fourteenth centuries. It was initially practiced by monk-painters active in the major Zen temples, but was also appreciated by the secular military elites who ruled Japan at that time. This Japanese scroll closely follows Chinese models. It depicts a mountainous landscape that is sharply defined in the foreground and becomes less distinct in the distance. Evidence of human civilization is visible but is dwarfed by the majestic natural forms. The composition is heavily weighted to one side, and large expanses of empty space give the image an evocative, lyrical quality. Indeed, the scroll belongs to a larger tradition of Chinese and Japanese paintings that were considered to be "poems without sound" and were intended to stimulate the viewer's imagination more than to portray a physical place.

An old seal in one corner of the painting attributes it to a famous monk-painter named Oguri S otan (1413-1481). Genuine Sotan paintings are rare, however, and it is doubtful that this scroll is actually from his hand. But it is most likely from the same period, and may have been the model for a similar painting ascribed to the monk Gakuo (active ca. 1504-1520) that is now in the Tokyo National Museum. Oberlin purchased this scroll from Cleveland-based dealer Howard Hollis in 1956 on the advice of Sherman Lee, a distinguished scholar who was then Curator of Oriental Art at the Cleveland Museum of Art and later became its director. Lee advised the AMAM on a number of Asian art purchases in the 1950s and '60s that greatly expanded and improved that part of the museum's collection.