Showrooms

Pine Tree in the Snow , circa 1924-1933

Creator: Yamamoto Shunkyo
Offered by: Thomsen Gallery

Description
Yamamoto Shunkyo
Pine Tree in the Snow , circa 1924-1933
Hanging scroll; ink and mineral pigments on silk
Overall size 87¾ x 26¼ in. (223 x 67 cm)
Image size 55¾ x 20 in. (141.5 x 51)
T-4836
Signed at lower left: Shunkyo; sealed Shunkyo and Rokasensuisō Shujin (Master of the Rokasensui Villa)

Comes with a double wood storage box, the outer box lacquered wood, the inner box inscribed outside Setchū oimatsu zu Shunkyo jidai (Old pine in the snow, inscribed in person by Shunkyo), with a seal

Considered one of the most influential painters in and around Kyoto from the Meiji to the early Showa era, Yamamoto studied under Nomura Bunkyo (1854-1911)—from whom he received his art name Shunkyo—and Mori Kansai (1814-1894), two important artists whose master-pupil pedigrees can be traced back through two or three generations to, respectively, Matsumura Goshun (1752-1811) and Maruyama Ōkyo (1733-1795), founding fathers of naturalistic painting in Kyoto.

Shunkyo enjoyed early success, participating alongside such luminaries as Kikuchi Hōbun (1862-1918) and the great Takeuchi Seihō (1864-1942) in the Seinen Kaiga Kyōshinkai (Young Artists’ Association) and serving on its jury; showing his work at international events in Munich, Paris, and Chicago; and taking his first pupil in 1892. After Kansai’s death in 1894 Shunkyo became an independent artist and in 1899 was appointed Professor at Kyoto Municipal Art School. As well as playing a part in the founding of several of the artists’ groups that formed and reformed so often in later Meiji-era Kyoto, he set up his own painting academy, the Dōkōkai, in 1900 and showed regularly first at the Bunten national exhibition from 1907 to 1916 and then at its successor the Teiten exhibition from 1922 until the year before his death in 1933. He was named Teishitsu Gigeiin (Artist to the Imperial Household, an honor broadly equivalent to today’s Ningen Kokuhō, “Living National Treasure”) in 1917, appointed to the Teikoku Bijutsuin (Imperial Art Academy) in 1919 and selected in 1928 for the special Shōtoku Taishi Commemorative Exhibition; in the same year he was commissioned to paint a pair of screens for the enthronement of the Showa Emperor. Sadly, his stellar career at the pinnacle of Japan’s official art system was cut short by his death at the relatively young of 61. A special exhibition devoted to his work was held at the Shiga Museum of Art in his native Otsu from April 23 to June 19, 2022.

Shunkyo’s artistic formation was unusually broad. Thanks to his two principal teachers, he was uniquely well versed in the eighteenth-century Kyoto Maruyama-Shijō style, a compelling synthesis of Western realism combined with East Asian media and brush techniques, but he was also a keen photographer, carrying cameras and other heavy equipment with him on his numerous mountain hikes (another of his passions) and devising and making his own chemical supplies for developing and printing. In addition, he took a close interest in European art, trying his hand at oil painting and learning from his celebrated painter friend Asai Chū (1856–1907) who returned from a two-year study visit to France in 1902.

His large-scale works, typically pairs of six-panel folding screens, were often majestic, photo-realistic mountain landscapes painted in vivid colors, but Setchū oimatsu (or Setchū rōshō), “Ancient Pine in the Snow,” was another of his favorite subjects. Like his contemporaries such as Muramatsu Ungai (1870–1926), whose screen we reproduced in our 2013 publication Japanese Paintings and Works of Art, Shunkyo was strongly influenced by the most famous work of Maruyama Ōkyo (mentioned above), a pair of National Treasure screens of snow-laden pines in the Mitsui Memorial Museum. Shunkyo showed his own pair of screens on the same subject at the second Bunten national exhibition in 1908 (now in the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, and another version dating from 1924, featuring a hawk on one of the trees, that was acquired by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, in 2007.

For this hanging-scroll version, Shunkyo devised a dramatic cropped composition that effectively suggests the scale and majesty of an ancient pine tree while showing only a short section of its trunk and two branches. Lavish applications of gofun (calcified crushed oyster shell) emulate the appearance of heavily settled snow and the falling flakes are conveyed by tiny drops of the same medium that he boldly flicked onto the silk. He used different shades of mineral green to represent pine needles in different stages of growth or decay; busy, dryish strokes of brown pigment of varying intensity for the trunk; and a range of color washes to express the atmosphere of a misty winter day. A masterly evocation that combines innovative aspects of the Kyoto painting tradition with a revolutionary, globalist approach to composition and depiction, this is an outstanding demonstration of Shunkyo’s mature style.

The second seal on this painting, Rokasensuisō shujin (Master of the Rokasensui Villa) indicates that it likely dates from after the year 1924, when the artist added an atelier and other structures to the residence of that name he had started to construct nine years earlier in his hometown of Zeze (now part of Otsu City) on Lake Biwa. Visitors to Rokasensui after its completion in 1926 included Paul Claudel, the French poet and dramatist who served as Ambassador to Japan from 1921 to 1927; Shunkyo had previously donated a painting to the Musée du Luxembourg in Paris and was named a Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur. The Rokasensui Villa is now officially designated a Jūyō Bunkazai (Important Cultural Property) of Japan as an outstanding example of Taisho-era traditional-style architecture. A recent photograph of the interior shows a panel-format version of a Setchū oimatsu (“Ancient Pine in the Snow”) displayed in one of the reception rooms.

More Information

Documentation:	Signed
Period:	1920-1949
Condition:	Good.
Styles / Movements:	Modern, Asian
Incollect Reference #:	755708

Dimensions

W.	26.25 in;	H.	87.75 in;
W.	66.68 cm;	H.	222.89 cm;

Message from Seller:

Thomsen gallery, located in a townhouse on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, offers important Japanese paintings and works of art to collectors and museums worldwide. The gallery specializes in Japanese screens and scrolls; in early Japanese tea ceramics from the medieval through the Edo periods; in masterpieces of ikebana bamboo baskets; and in gold lacquer objects.