Japan Art and Nagasawa Rosetsu: The Middle Kingdom (China)
Lee Jay Walker
Modern Tokyo Times
The artist Nagasawa Rosetsu (1754-1799) belongs to the Edo Period of Japanese history. Several opinions exist concerning his upbringing. However, irrespective of this, Rosetsu was blessed with an independent artistic spirit that was influenced by the Middle Kingdom (China).
His adult life was blighted by family tragedy. This concerns his four children dying young. Accordingly, art provided a vehicle to ease his burdened soul.
Ironically, unlike the modern period of Japanese history, Rosetsu adopted Roshū. Hence, his artistic pupil connected him to a family life that nearly passed him by because of tragedy (all are buried in the same cemetery in Kyoto).
The British Museum says Rosetsu was the “Son of Uesugi Kazuemon, a samurai of the Yodo domain in Yamashiro Province, and was apparently himself an adept of the martial arts. Possibly because of the quick physical responses that this fostered, his paintings demonstrate an individual style suggesting an active, incisive mind at work.”
Rosetsu was influenced by the Middle Kingdom (China). This concerns art, culture, philosophy, and other important areas of high culture.
The Worcester Museum says, “At about age twenty-five Rosetsu became the pupil of the Kyoto painter Maruyama Okyo, one of the most popular and prolific Japanese artists of the eighteenth century. Within four years he had become a respected painter in the Okyo tradition of detailed linear description of objects, his work differing from that of his master in its greater dynamism in composition and distortion of line. In 1786-87, after a trip to the southern part of Kii Province the younger artist turned away from a linear style to one based on washes and shading.”
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