Sketch for the Portrait of Tachihara Suiken
Tachihara Suiken (1744–1823) was the father of a close friend of Kazan's. The completed work is now lost, but several surviving sketches—including one thought to have been created shortly after Suiken’s death in the third month of 1823 (Tahara City Historical Museum, Aichi prefecture)— reveal that the artist rejected the concealment of physical defects in favor of a sympathetic realism. In this sketch, the only embellishments that refer to the subject's social status are his sword and the book tucked into his robe. His shriveled mouth and unshaven chin, adroitly captured by the Western technique of chiaroscuro—which Kazan had studied—enhance the impression of intense self-determination made by this eighty-one-year-old samurai and Confucian scholar.
Artwork Details
- 渡辺崋山筆 立原翠軒像稿
- Title: Sketch for the Portrait of Tachihara Suiken
- Artist: Watanabe Kazan (Japanese, died 1841)
- Period: Edo period (1615–1868)
- Date: ca. 1823
- Culture: Japan
- Medium: Hanging scroll; ink and color on paper
- Dimensions: 29 1/8 x 17 in. (74 x 43.2 cm)
- Classification: Paintings
- Credit Line: The Harry G. C. Packard Collection of Asian Art, Gift of Harry G. C. Packard, and Purchase, Fletcher, Rogers, Harris Brisbane Dick, and Louis V. Bell Funds, Joseph Pulitzer Bequest, and The Annenberg Fund Inc. Gift, 1975
- Object Number: 1975.268.114
- Curatorial Department: Asian Art
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Watanabe Kazan
ca. 1840
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