In Verdant Mountains Hoping for Snow
This small Chinese-style landscape is representative of the earliest stage of Urakami Gyokudō’s career, when he was still striving to reach the same level of mastery he had already achieved as a musician and composer. He was known especially for his proficiency on the seven-string qin (Japanese: shichigenkin), one of the four traditional accoutrements of a Chinese literatus, and his calligraphy was likewise highly acclaimed. He was conversant in Xie He’s “Six Principles of Chinese Painting,” included as a preface to the Classified Record of Painters of Former Times (Guhua pinlu, ca. 550), and other Chinese painting treatises, and we know that he copied Ming and Qing versions of Song and Yuan Literati paintings. Still, Gyokudō expressed frustration over his inability to find his voice as a painter. It was not until he reached his sixties and early seventies that he achieved a more energetic, abstract, and expressive mode of ink painting.
Though Gyokudō’s brushwork here does not manifest the unbridled assertiveness that characterizes his later oeuvre, nevertheless it reflects his bold experimentation with washes, gradations of ink, and short, quickly rendered strokes to accentuate darker areas; all coupled with extremely fine lines for architectural details. The presence of the seals “Gyokudō Ki Tasuku” and “Yū bunbō jūhachi-ya,” both of which he used on at least two other works created when he was in his late forties to early fifties, helps date the work to about 1794. Around this time, he left his official position in the domain of Bizen (in current-day Okayama prefecture) with his sons, Shunkin and Shūkin, both of whom also became painters.
Though Gyokudō’s brushwork here does not manifest the unbridled assertiveness that characterizes his later oeuvre, nevertheless it reflects his bold experimentation with washes, gradations of ink, and short, quickly rendered strokes to accentuate darker areas; all coupled with extremely fine lines for architectural details. The presence of the seals “Gyokudō Ki Tasuku” and “Yū bunbō jūhachi-ya,” both of which he used on at least two other works created when he was in his late forties to early fifties, helps date the work to about 1794. Around this time, he left his official position in the domain of Bizen (in current-day Okayama prefecture) with his sons, Shunkin and Shūkin, both of whom also became painters.
Artwork Details
- 浦上玉堂筆「青山欲雪」
- Title: In Verdant Mountains Hoping for Snow
- Artist: Urakami (Uragami) Gyokudō (Japanese, 1745–1820)
- Period: Edo period (1615–1868)
- Date: ca. 1794
- Culture: Japan
- Medium: Hanging scroll; ink on paper
- Dimensions: Image: 9 × 10 1/4 in. (22.9 × 26.1 cm)
Overall with mounting: 45 1/2 × 15 9/16 in. (115.5 × 39.5 cm)
Overall with knobs: 45 1/2 × 18 9/16 in. (115.5 × 47.1 cm) - Classification: Paintings
- Credit Line: Fishbein-Bender Collection, Gift of Estelle P. Bender, 2025
- Object Number: 2025.618.2
- Curatorial Department: Asian Art
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Urakami (Uragami) Gyokudō
ca. 1815–20
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