Page 311 - Edo: Art in Japan, 1615–1868

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3 i o

165 This painting, a product of Taiga's late gentleman's art of calligraphy. A
Ike Taiga (1723-1776) thirties or early forties, reveals the reminder that Taiga excelled as a cal-
Mount Fuji artist's eclecticism as well as his end- ligrapher is seen in the flourish of
less inventiveness. One of the tenets his signature, "Kashó," which means
c. 1760
Hanging scroll; ink and light color of the literati painting movement to "Hazy Woodcutter" and signals the
conceit of yearning for nature that
which Taiga belonged was to trans-
on silk form the styles of the great masters of was typical of the busy urban "profes-
3
65.9 x 97.5 (26 x 38 /s)
Private Collection, Osaka the past. Toward this end Taiga called sional literatus" painter.
upon that classic Chinese woodblock The composition of the painting is
instructional text, The Mustard Seed
• If the text of his memorial stone is unusual in Taiga's oeuvre. In the fore-
to be believed, Ike Taiga "painted one Garden Manual, for the schema of the ground is a Buddhist temple, situated
strokes
so-called raindrop texture
hundred scenes of Mount Fuji, each "in the manner of" the great Chinese at the shore of a lake or bay which
one different, and each a place that artist Fan Kuan (active c. 990-1030), creates a semicircle; it seems that
he himself had seen." At least fifty which Taiga applied with enthusiastic Taiga, too, was bitten by the desire to
paintings of Fuji by Taiga survive, abandon in the foreground. For the convey recession by means of the
some single paintings and others as texture of the foliage on the distant curvilinear forms that mark so many
parts of sets. He painted the moun- mountains Taiga employed his favorite of the other paintings included here,
tain in every conceivable style, includ- massed horizontal dots, which are particularly those with western influ-
ing tightly drawn, brightly colored associated with the literatus Mi Fu ence. A painting by Taiga almost iden-
classical Yamatoe; the minimalist, tical to this one has been published
splashy flung-ink manner associated (1051-1107; see also cat. 166). (Taiga 1960, no. 622). MT
with medieval ink painting; and, in The pronounced fluctuating outline
literati fashion, transforming the that contours the rocks and especially
brush mode of a given venerable pre- Mount Fuji, though rendered with a
decessor. He even practiced, over and particularly heavy hand here, is also
over, trying to capture the form of a characteristic of Taiga's painting,
the mountain in a single brushstroke. a device to proclaim its roots in the