Although many Japanese Nanga painters created works based on or inspired by old Chinese and Japanese masters, Urakami Shunkin is known to have used his own sketches drawn from real life as the basis for his finished works. Equally comfortable creating large-scale landscapes and small, detailed studies of plant life such as this picture of a pomegranate, still on the branch and split open to reveal its juicy red seeds. Since ancient times, images of ripe pomegranates bursting open have been valued in Korea, Japan, and other cultures influenced by China as symbols of fertility and abundance.
![Autumn Landscape [left of a pair of Spring and Autumn Landscapes], Uragami Shunkin, 1821](https://img.artsmia.org/web_objects_cache/122000/200/10/122215/mia_6026494_800.jpg)
![Spring Landscape [right of a pair of Spring and Autumn Landscapes], Uragami Shunkin, 1821](https://img.artsmia.org/web_objects_cache/122000/200/10/122216/mia_6026507_800.jpg)
