Thirty-Six Poets at Leisure

This scroll is a preparatory drawing sketched by the master, Goshun, and filled with annotations--presumably addressed to assistants--about appropriate spacing between figures and application of color.

The poets are rendered in a light-hearted and comic manner as the artist imagines how these ancient and revered figures of the Japanese cultural pantheon might have relaxed.

In an introductory note, Goshun writes that his painting and text are dependent on a work by the poet-painter Hinaya Ryuho (1599-1669). Rather than following the custom of borrowing representative poetry from existing anthologies, Ryuho created his own poems, attributed them to the ancients, and inscribed them next to his images of the poets. Goshun uses Ryuho's poetry verbatim in the scroll exhibited here.