Taihu Rock and Banana Plant

This late work by the Nanga painter Takahashi Sōhei shows a potted banana plant (bashō) and Taihu garden rock. According to Sōhei's signature, it was executed in 1831 at his residence in Itami, northwest of the city of Osaka, where he was active off and on from around 1824 until around 1830.

Takahashi Sōhei began studying painting with Tanomura Chikuden (1777–1835), a leading literati painter and fellow native of Bungo Province (modern-day Oita Prefecture) on the far western island of Kyūshū. Sōhei first encountered Chikuden in 1822 when the master visited Sōhei's hometown of Kitsuki from Kyoto. Soon thereafter, Sōhei took Chikuden as a teacher and returned with him to Kyoto, where he was quickly recognized as one of Chikuden's most promising students. Active primarily in Osaka after his initial training with Chikuden and other painters in his circle, Sōhei was so highly regarded that in the Chikuden's Record of Painting Teachers and Friends of Chikuden-sō (Chikudensō shiyū garoku), he is the only of Chikuden's disciples listed alongside many senior, leading artists of the day. However, by his mid-twenties, Sōhei had contracted an illness that forced him to spend most of his time back home in Bungo. Although his age at death, thirty-two, is known, there is some confusion about the exact year. He is thought to have stayed in Bungo permanently after 1830, and rumors that he had died began circulating in 1833, but he is believed to have survived a couple more years, until around 1835.