Picture Album of Landscapes by Yi Fujiu and Ike no Taiga (I Fukyū Ike no Taiga sansui gafu)

Ike no Taiga (1723—1776) was a painter of the mid-Edo (Tokugawa) period (1603–1867) who, together with Yosa Buson, established the bunjin-ga, or literati, style of painting, which survives to this day in Japan. (The style had originated in China and was first called Nan-ga, or the “Southern Painting” school, of Chinese art; it was closely related to scholarship and literature.) The son of a farmer, Ike was taught calligraphy and the Chinese Classics from an early age and eventually became one of the leading calligraphers of the Edo period. He first studied Nan-ga through an illustrated book of Chinese painting, Bazhong huapu (c. 1620), and was later influenced by such older Japanese Nan-ga painters as Ryū Rikyō and Gion Nankai, whom he first met about 1736 and 1752, respectively. Unlike most other bunjin-ga painters, who merely closely followed the style’s models, he developed a freer and ampler style, full of vitality and brightness.