Suzuki Shōnen (l849 – 1918)
Daruma
Signed: Shōnen senshi hitsu and sealed
Pair of six-panel screens; ink and color on paper
61 3/8 x 139 ¼ inches (176.2 x 353.7cm)
On the right screen Shōnen has written Futō futō sui futō (not falling, not falling, drunk but not falling); the left screen reads Meiji jin’in (1902), the month of the sun’s return, at Rōryūkan (Old Dragon Hall).
The entire surface of each screen has been sized or painted in white gofun prior to being painted. This pair of screens with their bold and masculine strokes seem to be prime examples of why Shōnen was often referred to in his day as “today’s Shōhaku.” One can almost believe that drunkenness would have been a prerequisite to gain the courage to attack this portrayal of the Daruma and his Buddhist whisk in such a dramatic fashion and on such a voluminous scale.
Shōnen was born in Kyoto on June 14, 1 848 with the familiar name of Hyakutarō and he first took the gō of Hyakusen. His father Hyakunen with whom he studied was the founder of the Suzuki School of Painting. Shōnen joined the staff of the Kyoto Prefecture Painting School in 1880 as an instructor of Chinese-style painting where his father and the artist Kōno Bairei were installed as principals. However Hyakunen left the school almost immediately and after ongoing friction with his son Shōnen , Bairei resigned in 1881, leaving Shōnen to head the organization. He retired from this post in 1888.
Shōnen became an indispensable member of the art world in Kyoto leading the rising Suzuki School and actively exhibiting not only in Japan but abroad. In Japan, exhibiting with various groups, he won prizes in the years 1882, 1884, 1890, 1895, and 1896; in 1893 he exhibited in the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago and in 1900 his painting Sound of the Mountain Stream through Pine Trees won the bronze prize at The Paris International Exposition.
Shōnen and Kōno Bairei were from the time of their earliest conflicts at the Kyoto Prefecture Painting School lifetime opponents, on both a professional and personal level. The young and talented female artist Ueda Shōen had come to study with Shōnen at the Kyoto Prefectural Painting School in 1887 and when he resigned the next year followed him to his private studio. However in 1893 she left to study with Bairei and upon his death in 1895 went on to study with Takeuchi Seihō. Even though she moved to the camp of his adversaries in art, apparently Shōnen’s personal dynamics held her interest as she gave birth to his son in 1902, causing a notable scandal in the art world of that day.
Shōnen was particularly talented at mountain and water and landscape painting as well as figure painting (especially paintings of philosophers and religious figures).
His signature works include the dragon painted on the ceiling of the Tenryūji Temple in Kyoto, the Battle of the Uji River screens, and landscape screens in the Ryōgen’in of the Daitokuji complex. All these were done in his later years when his power and notoriety had been eclipsed by rising younger painters such as Seihō, Tsuchida Bakusen, and Yamamoto Shunkyo and he had retired to his huge studio near the Shirakawa River to enjoy life and paint at his leisure.
Shōnen’s paintings can be found in the collections of the Ashmolean Museum, the British Museum , Daitokuji, Sanzen’in, Tenryūji and the Victoria and Albert Museum.
Click on any image for an enlarged view.
