Autumn Landscape

The immensely popular modern artist Shirakura Jihō, also known later in his career as Kanyū, has created an atmospheric, almost abstract scene of the mountains surrounding Kyoto. Washes of ochre and red convey the effect of foliage. The trunks of trees are brushed in watery ink and branches are picked out in darker tones. The distant mountains are suggested by pale blurry washes, as if wrapped in mist. The protagonist of the composition is the solitary man making his way down the mountain path; he seems to be conveying two bundles of firewood on a pole balanced on his shoulders. Jihō seems to be giving us modern take on the age-old East Asian pictorial theme of a woodcutter living in harmony with nature.

Shirakura Jihō (sometimes pronounced Nihō) was born in Niigata, and initially was introduced to Nanga (Literati painting) under the tutelage of a local artist Hatta Gorō. He relocated to Tokyo and began studying Western-style oil painting, but that left him uninspired. He then moved to Kyoto, where this painting was created, and resumed his study of Nanga painting under Tanabe Chikuson (1864–1922). After the death of Chikuson, he moved to Tokyo where he regularly exhibited works at both the Teiten and Nitten National Exhibitions as well as at the Nihon Nanga-in ten. In the immediate postwar period, he was ranked as one of the most prominent contemporary artists of Japan.