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

Few subjects hold more symbolic weight in Japanese art than the pairing of Mount Fuji with the ancient pine groves of Miho — a landscape that speaks to both national identity and the transient beauty of nature. Soga Shohaku was one of the most fiercely independent painters of eighteenth-century Japan, deliberately positioning himself outside the dominant Kano school tradition in favour of a raw, expressive brushwork that felt almost confrontational by the standards of his day. Executed around 1761–1762 as a pair of six-panel folding screens, this work balances restraint with drama: ink washes suggest mist and depth while delicate color renders the pine-lined shore with quiet precision, the whole composition unfolding across twelve panels like a slow exhalation. Shohaku was known in his lifetime as something of an eccentric, cultivating an unconventional persona that matched his equally unconventional technique — a reputation that has only deepened his standing among later admirers of Japanese art. This hand-painted oil reproduction translates the screen's sweeping horizontal rhythm and tonal subtlety onto canvas, preserving the meditative atmosphere that makes the original, now held at the Art Institute of Chicago, such an enduring work.