Purifying Sound (Seirai)

Purifying Sound (Seirai), the title given this work by the artist Keigetsu himself—in a skillfully brushed inscription on the storage box—is a poetic expression referring to the gentle sound of the wind soughing through trees, often referred to in premodern Chinese and Japanese verse. Sometimes the poetic topic disguisedly expresses statements of political dissent (see Alfreda Murck, The Subtle Art of Dissent, pp. 163–177). To pictorialize the auditory experience, the artist depicted a Chinese scholar with a bamboo staff ambling through a pine forest. He gazes meditatively upwards as if responding to something he has seen or heard. The upright stance of the figure and diagonal thrust of his staff are echoed by the angles of the trees in the background. Keigetsu brushed smooth, flowing outlines for the figure while the texture of the pine bark and details of the foliage are rendered brusquely and boldly. Without depicting the ground plane, Keigetsu effects a sense of spatial recession by reducing the size of trees in the background while successively lightening their tonality. The artist, more famous for his paintings of female subjects, has created a composition imbued with a lyrical naturalistic ethos.

Kyoto-based Kikuchi Keigetsu was one of the most highly regarded Nihonga artists of his day, and was teacher to numerous painters, including, most notably Horii Kōha (represented by two major works in the Salmon Collection). Keigetsu studied under Kikuchi Hōbun, and eventually married his daughter and thus inherited the Kikuchi family name. After the Bunten government sponsored exhibition was inaugurated in 1907, Keigetsu participated almost annually and achieved national prominence as a Nihonga artist. From 1918 onwards, he often served in the prestigious role of judge for both the Bunten and Teiten exhibitions. Keigetsu’s Taishō-period works vary widely in subject matter and style, ranging from naturalistic representation of scenes from contemporary life to more abstract Rinpa-inspired imagery. Keigetsu is best remembered for his Shōwa-period oeuvre, which features a serene figure style, characterized by highly refined outlines and a restrained palette. During the 1930s and through WWII, he depicted military heroes, though he is undoubtedly best remembered for his idealized images of modern women.