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Wednesday, 19 November 2014 10:35

Vassar’s Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center Acquires an Important Japanese Scroll Painting

Soga Shohaku's 'Pasturing Horses,' circa 1763-64. Soga Shohaku's 'Pasturing Horses,' circa 1763-64.

The Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center recently made a major acquisition: "Pasturing Horses," an eighteenth-century scroll painting by Japanese artist Soga Shohaku.

The painting is a key addition to the Art Center’s impressive collection. James Mundy, the Anne Hendricks Bass Director of the Art Center, said, “The size, quality and expression found in this work make it among the very best available.” Shohaku is one of the three key mid-Edo period painters in Kyoto known as “The Eccentrics.”  The other two artists of this group, Ito Jakuchu and Nagasawa Rosetsu, are already represented in the Center’s collection. The acquisition of this painting is “a capstone for the Center’s Japanese collection,” Mundy added.

Felice Fischer, the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s curator of Asian art, concurred. “'Pasturing Horses' is a showcase for Shohaku’s skills: his finely controlled brushwork, his wonderful sense of humor, and his ability to capture a whole world even on a relatively small-scale surface. His marvelous depiction of the horses’ movement and the individual expressions of the grooms speak volumes about Shohaku’s creativity.”

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