- Provenance
- Provenance research underway.
- Description
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In this narrow hanging scroll, a scholar and his young attendant make their way up a steep pathway toward a retreat, where another scholar gazes into the distance. The painting is executed spontaneously, in quick, repeated brush strokes. Ike Taiga, who became a leading artist of the Nanga school, learned his distinctive style from woodblock-printed manuals on the techniques of Chinese painting. For the themes of his work, he also drew his inspiration from Chinese sources. Here, the inscription on the painting quotes a single line from a Chinese poem: "Mountain ranges of great age, trees one thousand meters high."
- Inscription(s)
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1. (Ann Yonemura, 30 June 1992) The inscription quotes one line of a Chinese poem from the Tang dynasty, which can be rendered: "Layered peaks of great antiquity; trees one thousand meters high."
Taiga's signature and three seals also appear on the painting.
The storage box for this painting is inscribed by painter Tomioka Tessai (1836-1924).
- Label
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In this steep landscape, a scholar and his young attendant make their way up a pathway toward a retreat where another scholar gazes into the distance. The painting is executed with quick brush strokes accented by dots and lines in black ink. The artist, Ike Taiga, who became a leading proponent of the Nanga school, which specialized in painting Chinese subjects, first learned his distinctive style by studying woodblock-printed manuals on Chinese painting techniques. Many of his landscapes, like this one, were expressions of an idealized way of life rather than portrayals of actual places. Here the inscription quotes a line from a Chinese poem with a slight variation through the substitution of one character: "Mountain ranges of great age; a thousand tiers of trees."
- Published References
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- Kazuo Kurimoto. Ike Taiga sakuhin shu [Collection of Paintings by Ike Taiga]. Tokyo. cat. 124.
- Collection Area(s)
- Japanese Art
- Web Resources
- Google Cultural Institute
- SI Usage Statement
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Usage Conditions Apply
There are restrictions for re-using this image. For more information, visit the Smithsonian's Terms of Use page.
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CC0 - Creative Commons (CC0 1.0)
This image is in the public domain (free of copyright restrictions). You can copy, modify, and distribute this work without contacting the Smithsonian. For more information, visit the Smithsonian's Terms of Use page.
Usage Conditions Apply
There are restrictions for re-using this image. For more information, visit the Smithsonian's Terms of Use page.
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International Image Interoperability Framework
FS-5580_02