Sweetfish in Summer and Autumn

The paintings of Maruyama Ōkyo (1733–1795) were in such demand that long lines of carriages formed in front of his house.[1] He is said to have taught nearly a thousand pupils—some through correspondence. Ōkyo combined a virtuoso technique in the depiction of the natural world with a sensitive apprehension of the decorative, making his art easy to grasp and appreciate and laying the foundation of his own Maruyama school and the Shijō school, founded by one of his students, Matsumura Goshun (cat. no. 117).

Ōkyo's life is fairly well documented in a number of sources, two of which were written by his students.[2] According to these accounts, Ōkyo was born in Harima, not far from Kyoto, in Tanba Province (Kyoto Prefecture), the son of a farmer. He moved to Kyoto probably while still in his early teens and found employment at a shop that sold toys and novelties. One of these was a stereoscopic device, the nozoki karakuri, that heightened the illusion of three-dimensional space and perspective in the pictures seen through its lenses. Most of these megane-e (peep show pictures) were Chinese imports. Ōkyo copied them, but he also created his own. During this period, from about 1759 to 1767, Ōkyo also received formal training in painting from Ishida Yūtei (cat. no. 114), a prominent artist who had come to Kyoto from Ōkyo's hometown. It has been noted that Ōkyo's early paintings do not resemble Yūtei's brightly polychromatic compositions; rather, they are stylistically closer to the work of Yūtei's teacher, Tsuruzawa Tangei (1688–1769), a Kano artist.[3]

Ōkyo's artistic production was enormous. Many of his paintings bear dated inscriptions or are datable through letters or contracts, making it possible to reconstruct the evolution of his style, which is generally divided into four phases. Before 1765, Ōkyo acquired the basics of the Kano-school style, the techniques of Chinese Song and Yuan painting, and the manner of Shen Nanpin (Shen Quan, fl. 1725–80). He also became well versed in many styles of traditional Japanese painting, most notably that of the Rinpa school. But it was Western realism—specifically, the techniques of linear perspective and chiaroscuro—that had the strongest influence on the formation of his personal style.

In 1765, Ōkyo met Yujō (d. 1773), the abbot of Enman'in, Ōtsu, nor far from Kyoto, who recorded the encounter in his diary, the Manshi (Records of Ten Thousand Things).[4] While Ōkyo worked for the temple, he also instructed Yujō in painting. Yujō in turn instilled in Ōkyo a fascination with many of the European sciences, including anatomy and natural history. During the late eighteenth century, European books on a variety of scientific subjects, often containing illustrations, were entering Japan for the first time since the policy of expelling foreigners and excluding foreign artifacts and ideas had been mandated by the bakufu in 1639. They immediately became the focus of intense interest among Japanese intellectuals. Ōkyo's commentaries on the realistic portrayal of human figures, which Yujō recorded in his Manshi, reflect this excitement.

Until 1766 the artist had used many names, but in the winter of that year he chose, and retained, "Ōkyo." With Yujō 's help, he also was a well-established figure in Kyoto's artistic circles, and during the last ten years of his life he received many commissions for important, large-scale projects, including several at Buddhist shrines. In 1790, he was engaged in the renovation of the Imperial Palace in Kyoto, and in 1794 he completed a set of ninety screens for the Kotohiragu Shinto shrine, in northern Shikoku Island. He worked on a commission for Daijoji, northwest of Kyoto, until 1795, the year of his death.

On the left scroll of the elegant Burke diptych, Ōkyo's signature reads "Tenmei otsushi chushun utsusu Ōkyo" (Ōkyo painted [this] in February, the Year of the Snake, the Tenmei era [1785]). The paintings thus signal the beginning of the ten-year period during which the artist was constantly busy with major commissions. In the scroll at the right, eight small sweetfish streak up a narrow stream. Their almost translucent bodies, defined by chiaroscuro, while highly realistic, are submerged in the decorative, pale blue lines of the current. Pink azaleas signal early summer. In the scroll at the left, the crimson leaves of a maple tree are indicative of autumn. Here, the fish are fewer but larger, for it is in autumn that fingerlings are spawned and mature fish return to the sea.

The paintings reveal many features of Ōkyo's style, as well as his artistic lineage. The obvious reference to the passage of time—the behavior of fish in different seasons—and the decorative landscape settings reflect his considerable debt to the aesthetics of yamato-e. The expanses of unfilled space reveal a mastery of the Kano-school handling of solid and void, and the subtle blending of still-wet colors—pale gold with ink wash—a command of the Rinpa technique of tarashikomi (pouring of ink).

The composition is startlingly reminiscent of a painting by Ogata Kōrin (cat. nos. 132, 133) in the Hatakeyama Memorial Museum of Fine Art, Tokyo, of red and white azaleas growing on the banks of a stream (fig. 48).

[Miyeko Murase 2000, Bridge of Dreams]

[1] Mori Senzō 1934, pp. 584–93.
[2] Oku Bunmei, Sensai Maruyama Sensei den (Biography of the Teacher Maruyama Sensai), and Okamura Hōsui, Maruyama Ōkyo den (Biography of Maruyama Ōkyo), in, respectively, Mori Senzō 1934, pp. 591–93; and Umezu Jirō 1934, pp. 441–42. See also Rathbun and Sasaki Jōhei 1980, pp. 29ff.
[3] Hashimoto Ayako 1969, p. 12.
[4] Sasaki Jōhei and Sasaki Masako 1996, pp. 447–60; see also Oku Bunmei, Sensai Maruyama Sensei den, in Mori Senzō 1934, pp. 591–93.

Signature: Right scroll: Okyo Utsusu; Left scroll: Tenmei Kinoto Mi Chu-shun Utsusu Okyo.

Marking: Seals: Okyo no in; Chusen

Mary and Jackson Burke Foundation , New York (until 2015; donated to MMA)

Tokyo National Museum. "Nihon bijutsu meihin ten: nyūyōku bāku korekushon," May 21, 1985–June 30, 1985.

Ishikawa Prefectural Museum. "Nihon bijutsu meihin ten: nyūyōku bāku korekushon," July 13, 1985–August 11, 1985.

Nagoya City Art Museum. "Nihon bijutsu meihin ten: nyūyōku bāku korekushon," August 17, 1985–September 23, 1985.

Atami. MOA Museum of Art. "Nihon bijutsu meihin ten: nyūyōku bāku korekushon," September 29, 1985–October 27, 1985.

Hamamatsu City Museum of Art. "Nihon bijutsu meihin ten: nyūyōku bāku korekushon," November 12, 1985–December 1, 1985.

New York. Asia Society. "Art of Japan: Selections from the Burke Collection, pts. I and II," October 2, 1986–February 22, 1987.

Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt. "Die Kunst des Alten Japan: Meisterwerke aus der Mary and Jackson Burke Collection," September 16, 1990–November 18, 1990.

New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Masterpieces of Japanese Art from The Mary Griggs Burke Collection," March 30–June 25, 2000.

New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Great Waves: Chinese Themes in the Arts of Korea and Japan I," March 1–September 21, 2003.

Minneapolis Institute of Arts. "Post-renovation opening exhibition: Japanese galleries," April 11, 2006–January 17, 2007.

New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Celebrating the Arts of Japan: The Mary Griggs Burke Collection," October 20, 2015–May 14, 2017.

New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Kyoto: Capital of Artistic Imagination," July 24, 2019–January 31, 2021.

Murase, Miyeko, Il Kim, Shi-yee Liu, Gratia Williams Nakahashi, Stephanie Wada, Soyoung Lee, and David Sensabaugh. Art Through a Lifetime: The Mary Griggs Burke Collection. Vol. 1, Japanese Paintings, Printed Works, Calligraphy. [New York]: Mary and Jackson Burke Foundation, [2013], pp. 318–319, cat. no. 387.