Bamboo, Dapeng

Exhibition Label:
Asian Gallery, Spring 2003, Youmi Efurd
Obaku Dapeng (Japanese: Taiho), an immigrant Zen monk from China, was born in Quanzhou, Fujian. He became the fifteenth abbot of Mampuku-ji in 1745. Taiho was a cultivated artist with skills in poetry and calligraphy, but he became especially renowned for his bamboo painting. He developed his own style, which featured thick stalks with a curving or angled motion, clumps of leaves that criss-cross diagonally, and, in his more freely brushed works, isolated leaves flying in the wind.

This bamboo is from an original set of four bamboo panels. The painting displays his free and spontaneous brushwork. Here, Dapeng’s typically thick bamboo stalk angularly twists upwards while leaves echo the diagonal movement downwards.

Archive Label date unknown: Ta-p'eng was one of many Chinese Zen monks from Fuchien who emigrated to Japan after the fall of the Ming dynasty in 1644. He became the fifteenth abbot of the Obaku Zen temple Mampuku-ji in 1745. A specialist in the painting of bamboo, Ta-p'eng's style was unique, contrasting clumps of criss-crossing leaves with single flying leaves painted rapidly and spontaneously.