Calligraphy with painting of two eggplants | Ōtagaki Rengetsu 太田垣蓮月 | 1791-1875

Ōtagaki Rengetsu was a prominent figure in 19th-century Kyoto women’s culture. She was renowned as a poet, calligrapher, painter, and potter. Rengetsu developed her own style, which - particularly in her calligraphy - evokes the Heian-period women’s culture of Murasaki Shikibu and Sei Shōnagon (11th century). In her calligraphy, she favored the hiragana syllabary, just like her medieval courtly role models. When she used Chinese characters (kanji), she did so in a completely unorthodox and free manner.

Rengetsu’s life was marked by a series of harsh blows of fate, and so she decided to renounce the world and become a nun. She loved to poeticize the simple things - her delicate pottery, which (according to legend) she often took to the market in the morning to earn her daily bread, was mostly only ash- or clay-colored. Her paintings, too, were never ostentatious; they generally served to illustrate her calligraphic poems (tanka). For her calligraphy, she always chose a very thin brush, yet its stroke was always incomparably delicate and elegant.

The mounting of this summer painting is likely original - it could very well date from that period. In any case, its simple elegance complements the somewhat rustic quality of the painting’s paper base, with its inimitable delicacy of script and painting.

The poem reads, loosely translated:

There is plenty of (good) fruit (such as eggplant) in the world, but I find it even more joyful to do good (nasu: meaning both the verb “to do” and “eggplant”)