Pine Trees

The Japanese ink painter Hasegawa Touhaku lived from 1539 to 1610 in the province of Noto (now Nanao). He learned his trade in the so-called Kano school, but soon formed a very unique and distinctive style. On behalf of Buddhist monasteries, he painted screens and sliding doors with special brushes and also bamboo sticks, which were split at one end. This resulted in fragrant representations of trees in different shades of gray, which look like in the fog - mysterious and bewitched. Only from a certain distance can this misty and unfinished effect be created by the unpainted parts of the painting in the viewer's mind. The pine forest - in English "pine trees" - also served the painter Hiroshi Sugimoto as a template for his eponymous work of 2001 and was thus at the same time a tribute to one of the greatest Japanese painters of his time, Hasegawa Touhaku.