Spring Clouds Arising from the Gorge

This painting by Ike no Taiga embodies bunjin, or literati, artistic expression—the master in control of brushwork and ink tones. The simple composition reveals the artist’s understanding of how to balance mountains painted in varying gradations of ink with negative space to convey a sense of recession. The brushwork, in Mi dots and hemp-fiber strokes (traditional East Asian stippling techniques), appears to derive directly from Chinese painting manuals such as the Mustard Seed Garden Painting Manual and the Eight Varieties of Painting (Hasshū gafu) made available in Japan as woodblock-printed books. The latter publication is a Chinese “primer” for artists published in China during the early seventeenth century and republished in Japan in 1672 and 1710.

Based on its title, this painting is thought to be the one presented to scholar-painter and collector Kimura Kenkadō (1736–1802) for a shogakai, or “calligraphy and painting gathering,” in 1770 at the Ryūsenji subtemple of Tennōji. Kenkadō, however, it is thought to have been “rejected” because Kimura expected a more elaborate work on silk.