Ink Landscape

This brooding landscape of dark mountains and water was created using applications of dark ink washes to contrast with blank space that represents water and sky. The mountains, with their rounded triangular shapes, recede into the distance as overlapping forms with little change in ink gradation. The zig-zag composition, which fills the lower half of the picture plane, is accented by the winding path along the shoreline, and offset by vertical lines of the inscription above. The impression is one of an eerie silence and stillness.

Irie Shikai belonged to a group of early twentieth-century painters working in the so-called "New Nanga" mode, inspired—in Irie’s case—by Edo-period Nanga artists like Tanomura Chikuden (1777–1835). As his work is unlike that of his contemporaries, he is regarded as something of a "fringe" New Nanga painter. Many of his paintings are landscapes featuring a dark, foreboding coloration, or, in the case of ink landscapes, the heavy application of dark ink washes to mountain shapes for a haunting effect.