Benzaiten

Hoitsu was a versatile artist and is best known for his revival of the art of Ogata Korin (1658–1716), but he painted a number of full-color Buddhist images. At the age of thirty-six, he took Buddhist vows at the temple Tsukiji Hongan-ji in Edo (modern Tokyo), becoming a lay priest. Hoitsu was a devotee of the goddess Benzaiten and apparently based this painting on an image in the Tsurugaoka Hachimangu Srhrine in Kamakura. For his very similar painting of Willow-Branch Kannon in ink, color and gold leaf on silk, also in shades of green and blue, in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (2019.419.2), see Richard Fishbein, “Collecting Kannon,” Impressions 35 (2014), pp. 176–79 (www.japaneseartsoc.org).