Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove

This painting depicts seven scholars from third-century China gathered near a mountain stream and grove of bamboo. Four scholars chat at right while three at left admire a waterfall. Artists began creating images of the so-called “Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove” as early as the fourth century in China and by the ninth century in Japan. Little is known about the painter of this work, whose seal was once impressed at lower left and later scratched away. His style, however, is similar to that of a circle of painters active in eastern Japan in the vicinity of Kamakura during the late Muromachi period.