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Landscape

山水図

c. 1700–1751

Gion Nankai 祇園 南海

(Japanese, 1677–1751)
Culture
Japan, Edo period (1615–1868)
Medium
hanging scroll; ink and color on paper
Measurements
Painting: 102.2 x 55.2 cm (40 1/4 x 21 3/4 in.); Mounted: 189.9 x 67.9 cm (74 3/4 x 26 3/4 in.)
Credit Line
Andrew R. and Martha Holden Jennings Fund 1980.81
Public Domain
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Location
235A Japanese
Print

Description

A teacher of Confucian ethics, the Chinese philosophical system focused on social harmony and familial responsibility, Gion Nankai was also a painter. Ike Taiga (池大雅) (1723–1776) was among his students. Nankai inscribed this landscape with one of 24 poems for painting subjects composed by the scholar and painter Tang Yin (唐寅) (Chinese, 1470–1524). It reads as follows:

The mountain pavilion is desolate, visitors are rare.
Mud patches the brushwood gate; leaves patch my clothes.
Rising not from the bamboo bed, my head like snow.
Already without intent, I abandon questions of Zen.
A vertical hanging scroll in ink and light color depicts a mountain landscape. Toward the lower left, a figure sits within a thatched pavilion nestled among gnarled trees. Rounded peaks rise above, detailed with dark horizontal dashes for vegetation, with a thin waterfall cascading from a cliff on the left. Four columns of Chinese calligraphy and red seal marks occupy the upper right. Muted grays and earth tones define the rocky, receding terrain.

Landscape

c. 1700–1751

Gion Nankai

(Japanese, 1677–1751)
Japan, Edo period (1615–1868)

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