Goshun (呉春)
Goshun (April 28, 1752 - September 4, 1811) was a painter in the Edo Period.
His alias was Gekkei MATSUMURA
He was born in Kyoto and his father was a officer of Kin-za (literally, gold za, or gold mint). At first, he learned haikai (seventeen-syllable verse) and literati painting under Buson YOSA. After his wife's death, from 1781 for a while, he stayed in Ikeda City, Osaka Prefecture, counting on his patron who was a merchant, probably in order to heal his grief.
He started to call himself Goshun (呉春) after the old name of the place where he was staying, 'Kureha no Sato' (呉服の里). (Because of this, a locally brewed sake called 'Goshun' still exists in Ikeda City.)
From about this time, he became closer to Okyo Maruyama, whose picture had a contrasting style to that of his master Buson, and he broke new ground in his paintings, by changing his style to a more realistic one while conserving a taste for literati painting. He became the founder of the Shijo school, a sub-school ramified from the Maruyama school. These two schools, called collectively the Maruyama-Shijo School, are the root of the Kyoto Japanese art world in modern and contemporary times.
Representative works
Hakubaizu Byobu (Folding screen with plum tree) (owned by Itsuo Art Museum: important cultural property)
Kinuta-zu: Fulling cloth (Shuya toi zu: painting of the cloth-pounding in autumn evening) (owned by Itsuo Art Museum: important art)
Ryuro Gunkin-zu (Painting of egrets and willow) (owned by the Agency for Cultural Affaires: important cultural property)
Oukayuri-zu (Painting of playing carps) (owned by Itsuo Art Museum)
Daigo-ji Sanbo-in Fusuma-e (Painting on a sliding screen of Sanbo-in, Daigo-ji Temple), and Myoho-in Fusuma-e (Painting on a sliding screen of Myoho-in Temple)
Ryuin Kiryo-zu (Painting on the fisherman returning under the willow trees) (owned by Shizuoka Prefectural Museum of Art)
Short story on Goshun