Sanso Collection - Fugai Ekun

I have been blessed to work on mounting several prints into scrolls for the Sanso Collection (山荘コレクション) owned by the late Peter Drucker. As I do not own any rights, I can not post the pictures themselves, but will share my own personal feelings as I get to work on framing these paintings and my connection to what these artists say to me.

This is a painting by Fugai Ekun (1568-1654). Based on the link below, these are the characters 風外 I believe his last name translates to based upon the link below.

http://zenpaintings.com/artist-fugai.htm
This particular painting is titled Bodhidharma Crossing the Yangtze on a Reed. This is based on some of the traditional lore surrounding the figure Daruma, which you can read about here.http://www.onmarkproductions.com/html/daruma.shtml This scroll was done in the Yamato Hyougu style. It may have been more suited in a Butsu hyougu style, but the owner was trying to emulate the original styling of the scroll. What I really like is the cloth selections for this scroll. Two dark cloths were used, and typically I like a light to dark, or dark to light combination. However, in this case the black contrasting with the dark brown seems to reinforce the image of the painting.

If I remeber correctly, crossing on a reed was done in very light ink (which was all the style at the time) It incorporated a simple reed and shoe in it's illustration.

My first experience with a daruma ( figurine) was when I got to paint in the eyes...

Learning about the culture and lore of Japan has always been enjoyable for me. Growing up, my kids got bedtime stories from japanese fables translated into english. Their favorite was always "peach boy"......

dick benbow wrote:If I remeber correctly, crossing on a reed was done in very light ink (which was all the style at the time) It incorporated a simple reed and shoe in it's illustration.

Some, but this one has the entire figure and the reeds. More like the lower right hand painting.