Plum Blossoms from Seiran'en Painting Album

This painting is one leaf from an album created by adding a foreword and afterword to a group of paintings on silk by fifteen artists. According to the afterword, the album was assembled by selecting from the works that someone named "Baiinsen Minwa" had collected over a dozen years or so. The painting shown here, while small, presents the essence of Jakuchu's monochrome ink painting technique. The plum branch was painted in one stroke, in thick ink. The background is in paler shades. The many examples of Jakuchu's paintings of plum branches in small formats (the size of a square piece of thick paper used for calligraphy and painting, about 19 by 17 cm) attest to the strong demand for his monochrome paintings of plums.