Returned to lender The Met accepts temporary loans of art both for short-term exhibitions and for long-term display in its galleries.
A Thousand Mountains in Deep Verdure
Urakami (Uragami) Gyokudō Japanese
Not on view
This unusual octagonal picture is filled with mountains, a stream, and several thatched huts visible between the trees. A small figure on a bridge, a regular feature of Gyokudō’s paintings, holds a long staff and stands gazing at the distant mountains. The painting is titled A Thousand Mountains in Deep Verdure, but one feels here a sense of neither humid warmth nor the dazzling, vibrant new greenery of early summer. Gyokudō saw himself more as a musician than as a painter. It is said that before painting he would have a few rounds of sake and then take up the brush when feeling intoxicated. This painting, too, has the sort of rhythmical brushwork that leads one to imagine an artist working in a mood lifted by alcohol.
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