White Heron (Ink on Silk; by Ryozen)

An Ink Painting by the Fourteenth-Century Painter Ryozen

The White Heron (Ink on Silk; by Ryozen) (絹本墨画白鷺図〈良全筆〉, Kenpon Bokuga Hakuro-zu) is a hanging scroll of the Nanbokucho period owned by a private individual in Tokyo, which in 1943 was designated an Important Cultural Property.

The Agency for Cultural Affairs records it as a painting by Ryozen, one scroll. The words kenpon bokuga in its name mean ink painted on silk, and its subject is a white heron.

The Agency's database gives no dimensions or description of the picture. The owner is a private individual, and its location is not published.

The Painter Ryozen

The Tokyo National Museum describes Ryozen as a painter active in the fourteenth century in the circle of Tofukuji, a Zen temple in Kyoto, working in Buddhist painting and ink painting.

Among Ryozen's other works designated Important Cultural Properties is a Kannon painting in the Tokyo National Museum. The museum describes it as ink and light colour on silk, with rocks faintly drawn in pale ink behind the halo so that the whole picture becomes the space around the bodhisattva, and ranks it among the most successful ink Buddhist paintings of the fourteenth century.

Why It Matters

The White Heron (Ink on Silk; by Ryozen) is an example of a painter from the circle of a Zen temple taking a bird subject in the ink technique that came from China, in fourteenth-century Japan. Where the Tokyo National Museum's Kannon is a Buddhist image, this scroll shows Ryozen working in ink on a bird subject.

The Agency describes it only as a work of the Nanbokucho period, and no official description of its composition or brushwork could be found.

Seeing the White Heron

The White Heron (Ink on Silk; by Ryozen) is privately owned and is not on permanent display anywhere. If it is lent to an exhibition, little is announced in advance.

To see Ryozen's brushwork in person, look for the Kannon painting by Ryozen at the Tokyo National Museum, an Important Cultural Property; its display schedule appears on the museum's collection pages.