Page 299 - Edo: Art in Japan, 1615–1868

156 the towering quality of mountains, 157
Uragami Gyokudô (1745 -1820) and "deep distance," which imparts Goshun (Matsumura Gekkei;
Frozen Clouds, Sifted Snow recession through forms placed at 1752-1811)
forty-five degree angles to the pic- Spring Willows and Heron; Mynas in
c. 1811-1812 ture plane. Like such Song paintings, Autumn Foliage
Hanging scroll; ink on paper
x
Ï33-5 x 56.2 (52 /2 x 22 Ys) Frozen Clouds, Sifted Snou; presents Mid-i78os
an immense
slice of nature, moves
Kawabata Foundation, Kanagawa the viewer by the lyrical evocation Pair of six-panel screens; ink and
National Treasure color on silk
of seasonal and spatial grandeur, 7
Illustrated page 43 and reduces the human presence to Each 164.8 x 366 (64 /s x 144 Vs)
Agency for Cultural Affairs, Tokyo
minuscule figures discernible only Important Cultural Property
• Uragami Gyokudô, a leading figure after the viewer's eye has made a com-
298 among the third-generation literati, plete circuit through the land forms.
or bunjin, painters, was born into a • One screen by Goshun evokes the
samurai family in service to the Ikeda Gyokudô's brushwork runs the gamut calls of myna birds echoing through a
from
wet to dry, thick ink to pale,
clan of Bizen province (present-day and splotted application to fine, pen- scraggly, weed-choked landscape in
Okayama Prefecture). Given the tradi- like lines. Although his signature, autumn; the other depicts a powerful
tional Confucian education befitting "Gyokudô the qin player, painted heron lifting off from a bunting-filled
members of his station, Gyokudô when drunk," and the white seal thicket of spring green willow. The
studied, in addition to Chinese phi- reading "drunken rustic" may seem painted subjects seem within easy
losophy, Chinese-style calligraphy, to suggest that the artist was intoxi- grasp of the observer. The cropping of
poetry, painting, and music. He was landscape elements at the bottom of
particularly passionate about the cated when he executed the paint- the picture promotes a sense of con-
ing, drunkenness is a trope for break-
seven-stringed Chinese qin, the an- ing boundaries. Indeed few paintings nection with the viewer's space, and
cestor of the Japanese koto, and fre- in the history of Japanese art dis- the resulting composition is both in-
quently alluded to his mastery of timate and atmospheric. The impres-
the instrument in the signatures and play such a perfect dissolution of sion of immediacy is enriched by the
the division between vision and
seals he used on his paintings. At technique. MT personalized brushwork, seen espe-
age forty-nine Gyokudô resigned his cially in the rocks and tree trunks,
official position and spent nearly a through which Goshun communi-
decade wandering before he settled cated his temperament and training.
in Kyoto in 1811, about the time he These calligraphic aspects, especially
painted this scroll. notable in texture strokes and dots,
were learned by Japanese artists of
Perhaps it was this new domestic the Nanga school from Chinese
stability that motivated Gyokudô to literati painting.
create what was to be his most am-
bitious and moving painting. Frozen Goshun's primary teacher during his
Clouds, Sifted Snou; combines two of early career, Yosa Buson (1716 -1783),
the compositional formulas devised was one of the great masters of the
by Chinese painters of the Northern second-generation Nanga painters in
Song dynasty (960-1127) to encom- Japan. Goshun's work differed from
pass a monumental vertical view: his master's in its increased natural-
"high distance," which emphasizes ism. This may have had bearing on
his later decision to change styles and
become a colleague of Maruyama
Okyo (1733 -1795), a master of the
naturalist school of painters in Kyoto.
This pair of screens was rendered in
the mid-i78os, a date attested by
signature style and by the construc-
tion of the composition in large
masses, a feature characteristic of
that time. HG

157 (detail)