Kōrin

Kōrin, full name Ogata Kōrin (1659-1716), Japanese artist, the greatest painter of the 17th- and 18th-century decorative school. Born into a family of painters, he is thought to have studied with the famous Kano school of art masters. He became especially noted for his paintings of flowers, animals, and landscapes, which attained an elegance and stylized grace unsurpassed in Japanese art. Kōrin's best-known works, his two sixfold Irises screens (Nezu Art Museum, Tokyo), shimmer with blue flowers and green leaves against a gold-leaf background. His ink strokes and lines were often daringly spare, but his color was highly complex, achieving infinite gradations of iridescent shadings; he often mixed ink and gouache directly on the paper to create spontaneous and unexpected effects. Kōrin's masterpiece, the pair of twofold screens, White and Red Prunus in the Spring (National Museum, Tokyo), shows two stylized trees arching over a sinuously drawn stream; the swirling pattern of the stream directly inspired the famous “whiplash” line in late-19th-century art nouveau in Europe.

See also Japanese Art and Architecture.