Landscape, Noguchi Shōhin

Archive Label 2003: Noguchi Shōhin was one of Japan’s last great literati painters and by the end of her life she had amassed many honors. She was named official artist of the Imperial Household in 1904, perhaps an unprecedented honor for a woman. She taught at the Peers’ Girls School and counted several members of the Imperial family among her private pupils. She exhibited widely both nationally and internationally, including at the Paris Exposition of 1889 and the Chicago World Exposition of 1893. Shōhin had a difficult life and did not achieve these honors easily. Although she was a girl, her father, a well-educated Osaka pharmacist, had given his gifted daughter a classical education and the opportunity to study painting seriously. After her father died in 1860, however, the fourteen-year-old Shōhin became the primary breadwinner. She and her mother moved to Kyoto where Shōhin studied with the bunjinga master Hine Taizan (1813-1869), participated actively in the Kyoto literati world, and sold paintings. In 1871 she moved to Tokyo and a few years later received her first commission from the empress. She also traveled widely during this period, seeking commissions and participating in literary gatherings. In 1877 she married Noguchi Masaaki in Yamanashi prefecture but in 1882 moved back to Tokyo with her husband and child when he was ousted from the family sake business. Once again she became, and remained, the primary breadwinner for the family. This painting depicts none of Shōhin’s personal and financial struggles but instead describes an idyllic Chinese-style literati landscape with distant mountains and a scholar’s retreat, here nestled near a bamboo grove. The painting is beautifully executed and draws one close to examine the skill and variety of Shohin’s brushwork. Note, for example, the delicate rendering of the bamboo grove. Most literati paintings depict a male world. In this painting, however, women inhabit the landscape with grace and assurance.