was a Japanese painter and

landscape A landscape is the visible features of an area of land, its landforms, and how they integrate with natural or human-made features, often considered in terms of their aesthetic appeal.''New Oxford American Dictionary''. A landscape includes th ...

artist.

Family

Sōami was the grandson and son of the painters and art connoisseurs

Nōami was a dōbōshū (artist and art connoisseur for the shogunate) in the service of the Ashikaga shogunate, an esteemed Ink wash painting, suiboku (monochrome ink) painter, renga (linked verse) poet and tate-bana flower artist. He was especially c ...

and Geiami, respectively.

Career

Sōami was in the service of the Ashikaga shogunate and is claimed to have designed the rock garden of the

Ginkaku-ji , officially named , is a Zen temple in the Sakyo ward of Kyoto, Japan. It is one of the constructions that represent the Higashiyama Culture of the Muromachi period. History Ashikaga Yoshimasa initiated plans for creating a retirement vi ...

temple. Unlike many of his contemporaries, Sōami's paintings were in the style of China's

Southern School The Southern School () of Chinese painting, often called '' literati painting'' (), is a term used to denote art and artists which stand in opposition to the formal Northern School () of painting. The distinction is not geographic, but relates ...

; some of his greatest pieces covered over twenty panels, and depicted Japanese landscapes using Chinese methods. His work was among the first '' nanga'' or Southern School work in

Japan Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asia, Asian mainland, it is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea ...

. Sōami is most known for hi
Landscape of the Four Seasons (Eight Views of the Xiao and Xiang Rivers)
(at Archive.org).

Famous works

Ryōan-ji Ryōan-ji (, , ''The Temple of the Dragon at Peace'') is a Zen temple located in northwest Kyoto, Japan. It belongs to the Myōshin-ji school of the Rinzai branch of Zen Buddhism. The Ryōan-ji garden is considered one of the finest surviving ex ...

: Zen temple whose rock garden may have been designed by Soami * Seika: A style of flower arrangement supported by Soami *

Daisen-in The is a sub-temple of Daitoku-ji, a temple of the Rinzai school of Zen in Buddhism, one of the five most important Zen temples of Kyoto. The name means "The Academy of the Great Immortals." Daisen-in was founded by the Zen priest , and was bui ...

: A Zen temple noted in part for screen paintings attributed to Soami

References

* Etō, Shun, ''Sōami•Shōkei'' (from the series ''Nihon bijutsu kaiga zenshū''), Shūeisha, Tokyo, 1979. 1525 deaths 16th-century Japanese painters Japanese landscape painters Year of birth unknown {{Japan-painter-stub