Tawaraya Sōtatsu

Tawaraya Sōtatsu ran a painting workshop in Kyoto that made fans and decorated papers, and collaborated for years with the calligrapher Hon'ami Kōetsu, painting gold and silver designs beneath his poems. He popularised tarashikomi, dropping wet pigment into still-wet paint to create pooled, mottled effects. His folding screens, above all Wind God and Thunder God, set bold, simplified forms against bare gold grounds. With Kōetsu he is regarded as the founder of the Rinpa school, later continued by Ogata Kōrin.