Monkeys Playing Among Trees and Rocks

Formerly it was thought that Shikubu Terutada (n.d.) was another name for Shōkei, also known as Chūan Shinkō (a painter at Kenchōji Temple in Kamakura), but it is now clear that he was a totally different person, active mostly in the Kantō area of Eastern Japan, around the middle of the sixteenth century. Because he has posthumously been attributed with an enormous number of fan paintings, it has been suggested that he headed a fan workshop. In addition, he purportedly worked for the Imagawa family, lords of Suruga province, but all these postulations await further investigation.
This screen is one of four in his hand. The scene of monkeys playing deep in the mountains by the waterside has been brushed with a soft touch reminiscent of the Song-dynasty master Muqi ( J. Mokkei, ca. 1210–1269). While the complex, cragg y rocks clearly exhibit characteristics of Shōkei, influence from the Kano school is remarkable in the dense, strong compositional methods. The humanistic rendering of the monkey’s expressions here elicits a smile.