The Burke Collection
Plum Blossoms
Click to enlarge
124-1

Artist

Motsurin (or Botsurin) Shōtō (or Jōtō)

(没倫紹等, also known as Bokusai [墨斎]; d. 1491)

Catalogue information

Muromachi period

Hanging scroll; ink on paper

27.3 x 42.4 cm (10 3/4 x 16 3/4 in.)

Donated to The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York by the Mary and Jackson Burke Foundation in 2015

Literature

Murase 1975, no. 36
Murase, Miyeko
1975
Japanese Art: Selections from the Mary and Jackson Burke Collection. Exh. cat. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

See full bibliography

;
Miyajima Shin’ichi 1994, fig. 60.
Miyajima Shin’ichi
1994
Suibokuga: Daitokuji ha to Jasoku (Ink painting: The Daitokuji School and Jasoku). Nihon no bijutsu (Arts of Japan), 336. Tokyo: Shibundō.

See full bibliography

See also

This artwork was published as catalogue entry 124 in Volume I of Art through a Lifetime.

Additional details

B4r1_28o3_detail
B4r1_28o3_detail
D124-1

Text

by Motsurin Shōtō (d. 1491)

I walk over the stream and garden in search of flowers. / The plum tree stands tall and welcomes the immortals. / Its elegant appearance in winter surpasses its peers. / Fragrance that lingers even after three bathings is unique to this flower. / Peonies are supreme as the flowers of the rich, / jasmine is superior as the flower of purity. / But these are inferior to this earliest one of flowers, / for it captures the spring of myriad blossoms.

Seal

Shōtō