Ogata Kōrin

Japan·1658-1716

Ogata Kōrin brought decorative brilliance to late-seventeenth-century Japan. Born in 1658 into a wealthy Kyoto textile merchant family, he spent his early years in the theater and high society before turning to art in his forties, driven by financial hardship and personal pride. Working across screens, ceramics, lacquerware, and textiles, Kōrin mastered a distinctive visual language: bold compositions on gold grounds, rhythmic natural forms rendered with elegant restraint, and a decorative sensibility that blurred boundaries between fine and applied arts. His large folding screens—the Irises and Red and White Plum Blossoms among them—established him as a central figure of the Rinpa school. He died in 1716 in Kyoto, but his influence extended far beyond his lifetime, shaping Japanese aesthetics for centuries to come.