Lot 60: MT. FUJI, SEIKENJI, AND MIHO NO MATSUBARA

Maruyama Okyo (1733 - 1795) Mt. Fuji, Seikenji, and Miho no Matsubara A pair of six-fold screens, sumi [ink] and sprinkled gold on paper, depicting Mount Fuji amongst clouds and mist, the landscape continuing onto the second screen, signed and sealed by the artist Each 153.5 x 372.2cm.

153.5 x 372.2cm.

Shizuoka Prefectural Museum of Art, Sekai isan kinen Fuji san no Kaiga ten, (Shizuoka, 2013), p. 62-63, pl. 33

Private Collection, Kyoto

This transcendently bucolic scene was painted by one of the busiest, most successful painters in the bustling metropolis of Kyoto. It depicts the timeless snow-capped Mt. Fuji above foothills and clouds, in a characteristic composition that features a peek at the Zen temple Seikenji at the extreme left and a whisper of the famous pine-topped landspit Miho no Matsubara at the lower right of the left screen. These elements became standard in depictions of Fuji in the medieval period. The right screen is given over to a generic scene of low mountains that may be interpreted as the rolling topography that builds towards Fuji. No human presence disturbs this timeless landscape. The painting is ascribed to Maruyama Okyo by the third-generation head of the Maruyama studio, Oshin (1790-1838), whose signature appears on both screens. Okyo’s career represents a rags-to-riches story. Born the son of a farmer in Tanba province, Okyo made his way to Kyoto and found a job painting faces on dolls for the proprietor of a toy shop. The same shop imported optical devices featuring European perspective pictures. The omnivorously-curious Okyo mimicked these compositions, and he also studied Kano painting, Nagasaki realistic-style painting associated with the Chinese painter Shen Nanpin who came to Japan in the 1730s, Western style painting, Muromachi ink-painting, and Yamato-style Japanese painting. Swept up in the spirit of scientific empiricism of his age, Okyo also advocated sketching from life. He is singular for drawings of nude figures in various active poses, upon which he superimposed clothes. Okyo was ‘discovered’ by the aristocratic abbot Yujo of Enman-in in Otsu and given numerous important commissions, as well as introductions to important clients. His capstone achievement came when a late eighteenth-century directory, Who’s Who in Kyoto, named him the premier artist of the city. This masterful opus epitomizes Okyo’s preternatural ability to synthesise eclectic picture-making techniques into a harmonious whole. The composition with Seikenji and Miho no Matsubara is indebted to an iconic ink-painted hanging scroll by Sesshu Toyo (1420-1506). Indeed, the way the composition is anchored on the right and spreads into deep distance towards the left is a time honoured trope. The ethereal effect of the light sprinkles of gold owes much to the work of the prodigious Kano Tanyu (1602-74), the first painter-in-waiting to the Tokugawa shogunate. Additionally there are a number of features that betray Okyo’s unique vision. Parts of the painting, particularly the contours of some of the mountains, employ Okyo’s unorthodox technique of using a fat brush (hake). The effect of sunlight playing over the mountains and imparting to them a three-dimensional solidity was also pioneered by Okyo in response to the way a scene actually looks; Okyo discarded the conventionalised Chinese-derived texture strokes that mark the work of the Kano school. Finally, rather than paint Fuji’s summit as three stylised peaks, as painters had done up to the eighteenth century, Okyo has depicted it in the irregular configuration as it appears to the eye. With its deft combination of the timeless and the timely (as it would have appealed to the eighteenth-century demand for specificity), it is easy to see why Okyo’s painting would exert such a strong appeal for his contemporaries and continues to do so today. For an example with a similar depiction of water and gold mist by Maruyama Okyo in the collection of the Miho Museum, go to http:/www.miho.or.jp/booth/html/imgbig/00002984e.htm