Mount Fuji and the Miho Pine Forest

Soga Shohaku · c. 1761-1762

Medium

Pair of six panel screens; ink and light colors on paper

Original size

157.5 × 362 cm (62 1/16 × 142 9/16 in.)

Currently held

Art Institute of Chicago

Movement

Rococo

Mount Fuji and the Miho Pine Forest stands as one of the great monuments of Edo-period screen painting, placing Japan's most sacred peak against a coastline that has been celebrated in poetry and art for over a millennium. Soga Shohaku (1730–1781) was among the most singular painters of his era — technically brilliant, deliberately eccentric, and resistant to the conventions of the dominant Kano school. Working in ink with only sparing touches of color, he brought a theatrical intensity to traditional subjects, his brushwork shifting between delicate atmospheric washes and bold, almost restless strokes. These six paired screens reveal both his command of monumental composition and his rare ability to hold stillness and tension in the same image. Shohaku is well-documented to have cultivated an outsider persona throughout his career, sometimes presenting himself as a wild or unorthodox figure — a posture that sat in striking contrast to the rigorous discipline visible in works like this one. Our hand-painted oil reproduction captures the quiet drama of the original: the misted coastal pines, the clean geometric presence of Fuji's cone, and the vast, contemplative space Shohaku conjures with so little pigment and such precise intent.