Bamboo 竹 | Matsumura Keibun 松村景文 | 1776-1843

Matsumura Keibun was the younger half-brother of Matsumura Goshun. Under Goshun's leadership, one of the most important students of the painterly genius Maruyama Ōkyō (1733-1795), the Matsumura brothers established the Shijō School in Kyoto, which became the epitome of elegant 19th-century Kyoto painting. From Maruyama Ōkyō, Keibun inherited the artist's desire to approach nature realistically – to observe closely and then translate what he saw into an appropriate brushwork was the motto. Even Ōkyō was no naturalist (he was averse to being completely subservient to the observation of nature), and this also applies to Keibun. Despite all botanical accuracy, a plant – in this case, bamboo plants – should be an enchanting dance of the brush in the picture. The grouping of the sheets, the empty spaces, all the pictorial elements were intended to delight the viewer as a play of forms and not only to prove that the artist had studied nature before painting. 

In this picture ensemble, the framing fabric (chūmawashi)—a precious embroidery with a bamboo motif on printed silk—strongly emphasizes the artistic aspect of the painting. For Keibun, elegance was always paramount, and this scroll painting as a whole is certainly vivid proof of that.