Pine Trees

Hasegawa Tohaku painted with a coarse brush of straw or worn hair, dragging thin ink fast for the distant trees and loading it heavy for the near ones, so that the difference in tone alone creates depth. Notice the way the brush splits and skips, leaving broken lines that read as needles and bark. The paper is not the fine paper of a commissioned work but ordinary sheets joined together, and scholars think the screens may have been a preparatory study that was later mounted because it was too beautiful to discard. Stand at a distance first, then close, and the two views are entirely different.

Tohaku was a provincial painter from Noto who came to Kyoto and became the rival of the Kano school. His son Kyuzo died young in 1593, and some see the melancholy of this work as the father's grief. The screens are a National Treasure and among the most fragile objects in the collection, so the museum shows them only for a short period, usually a couple of weeks in January, when visitors queue for a look. If you are here at any other time, a fine reproduction is often displayed instead.

Did You Know? The screens were painted on cheap joined paper, and may have begun as a rough study that turned out too good to throw away.