Two Deer beneath Maple Trees

This painting was created in the tenth month of the lunar calendar—at the beginning of winter, when maple trees begin their transformation to brilliant crimson. Deer in Japanese poetry are connected with autumn, and these were painted with exacting detail; the texture of the fur has an almost tactile quality. The use of trees to frame the image echoes Kano-school conventions, while foliage and river elements reflect the ink-mottling technique (tarashikomi) used by Rinpa artists. The realism of the scene would have been a novelty to audiences at the time, but Maruyama Ōkyo handled the arrangement with subtlety. Contrasting this work with deer paintings by Yosa Buson (1716–1783) in the Literati mode allows us to see how radically Ōkyo departed from the idea of brushwork as the primary method of expression.