Mochizuki Gyokkei
Ducks, Pines, and Prunus in the Snow, 1900-1910
Pair of six-panel folding screens; ink, mineral colors, shell powder, and gold wash on silk; the reverse lined with paper stenciled using mica and shell powder with a design of hares leaping over stylized waves
Size each screen 67 x 147¾ in. (170.5 x 375 cm)
T-4376
Further images
-
(View a larger image of thumbnail 1
)
-
(View a larger image of thumbnail 2
)
-
(View a larger image of thumbnail 3
)
-
(View a larger image of thumbnail 4
)
-
(View a larger image of thumbnail 5
)
-
(View a larger image of thumbnail 6
)
-
(View a larger image of thumbnail 7
)
-
(View a larger image of thumbnail 8
)
-
(View a larger image of thumbnail 9
)
-
(View a larger image of thumbnail 10
)
-
(View a larger image of thumbnail 11
)
-
(View a larger image of thumbnail 12
)
-
(View a larger image of thumbnail 13
)
-
(View a larger image of thumbnail 14
)
-
(View a larger image of thumbnail 15
)
-
(View a larger image of thumbnail 16
)
-
(View a larger image of thumbnail 17
)
-
(View a larger image of thumbnail 18
)
-
(View a larger image of thumbnail 19
)
-
(View a larger image of thumbnail 20
)
-
(View a larger image of thumbnail 21
)
-
(View a larger image of thumbnail 22
)
-
(View a larger image of thumbnail 23
)
-
(View a larger image of thumbnail 24
)
-
(View a larger image of thumbnail 25
)
-
(View a larger image of thumbnail 26
)
Signed at lower right of the right-hand screen Gyokkei utsusu (Drawn by Gyokkei); sealed Shigenobu and Gyokuzen; signed at lower left of the left-hand screen Heian Gyokkei utsusu (Drawn by...
Signed at lower right of the right-hand screen Gyokkei utsusu (Drawn by Gyokkei); sealed Shigenobu and Gyokuzen; signed at lower left of the left-hand screen Heian Gyokkei utsusu (Drawn by Gyokkei of Kyoto); sealed Shigenobu and Gyokuzen
Mochizuki Gyokkei (born Mochizuki Shigenobu) was the son of Mochizuki Gyokusen (1834–1913), the last in a family lineage established by his great-grandfather, also called Gyokusen (1692–1755); the latter Gyokusen, a painter to the imperial court who played a major part in laying the foundations of art education in Kyoto, exhibited frequently both at home and overseas, winning an award at the 1889 Paris Exposition, and was appointed Teishitsu Gigeiin (Artist-Craftsman to the Imperial Household) in 1904.
After assuming his own art name of Gyokkei, Mochizuki Gyokkei won a Certificate of Merit in 1896 for a view of Okitsu in Shizuoka Prefecture shown at the first exhibition of the Nihon Kaiga Kyōkai (Society for Japanese Painting) and was widely praised for a painting of white peafowl at the Society’s ninth exhibition in 1900. He would go on to paint several more peafowl screens, including a pair now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (1908); his most famous recorded work is perhaps a set of fusuma (sliding doors) depicting cranes, pines, bamboo, and plum trees painted in 1912 for the Shobikan Guest House when it was moved from the Imperial Palace in Kyoto to the Heian Shrine. His son Mochizuki Gyokusei would show works in a much more contemporary manner at the Teiten national exhibition in 1928 and 1930.
Like the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s screens, this pair melds diverse styles, separated in time and place: Yamato-e, a Japanese painting tradition dating back to medieval times and championed by Gyokkei’s father’s lineage; the Maruyama-Shijō school’s combination of dramatic use of space with careful naturalism, developed in Kyoto from the middle of the Edo period (1615–1868); detailed bird-and-flower painting in the Chinese manner, brought to Japan by Chinese painters resident in Nagasaki during the eighteenth century; and Western perspective, which was becoming increasingly influential on practitioners of the new art of Nihonga (neo-nativist painting) during the last years of the Meiji era.
The meticulous depiction of the five ducks recalls other birds seen in the work of eighteenth-century Kyoto masters who were in turn influenced by the Nagasaki artists and their imitators, while in both overall form and detailed brushwork the snow-laden pine tree in the left-hand screen was directly inspired by one of two pines in the left-hand screen of Pine Trees in the Snow, a celebrated masterpiece by Maruyama Okyo (1733–1795) in the Mitsui Memorial Museum. Even more than the Metropolitan screens, this pair makes dramatic use of Western-style perspective through skillful handling of the ripples in the river and foreshortening of the snow-covered bank on the opposite shore. As if countering this imported element, the snow falling from a branch of the pine tree appears frozen in time, an effect often observed in scrolls by Suzuki Kiitsu (1796–1858) and other later artists in the Rinpa manner of abstracted painting of nature. Executed against a background of carefully modulated gold wash (which incidentally is very similar to the Metropolitan screens), these screens are thus a grand synthesis of numerous artistic trends at an exciting moment in the evolution of twentieth-century Japanese painting.
REFERENCE
Print
Nichigai Asoshiētsu 日外アソシエーツ, Bijutsuka jinmei jiten: Kokon, Nihon no bukko gaka 3500nin 美術家人名事典：古今・日本の物故画家3500人 (Japanese Artists: A Biographical Dictionary of 3500 Painters Past and Present). Tokyo: Nichigai Asoshiētsu 日外アソシエーツ, 2009, p. 582: for both Gyokkei and his father Gyokusen.
Melanie Trede (ed.), Arts of Japan: The John C. Weber Collection, Berlin: Museum für Ostasiatische Kunst, 2006, pp. 152–153 (cat. no. 45), reproduces the white peafowl screens now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Online
Metropolitan Museum of Art
www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/78229
Discussion of a pair of six-panel folding screens of white peafowl in the Met collection, dated 1908 and showing many similarities to the present work.
kyoto-okazaki.jp/spot/2020/03/21877/
Mentions the Shōbikan paintings.
Mochizuki Gyokkei (born Mochizuki Shigenobu) was the son of Mochizuki Gyokusen (1834–1913), the last in a family lineage established by his great-grandfather, also called Gyokusen (1692–1755); the latter Gyokusen, a painter to the imperial court who played a major part in laying the foundations of art education in Kyoto, exhibited frequently both at home and overseas, winning an award at the 1889 Paris Exposition, and was appointed Teishitsu Gigeiin (Artist-Craftsman to the Imperial Household) in 1904.
After assuming his own art name of Gyokkei, Mochizuki Gyokkei won a Certificate of Merit in 1896 for a view of Okitsu in Shizuoka Prefecture shown at the first exhibition of the Nihon Kaiga Kyōkai (Society for Japanese Painting) and was widely praised for a painting of white peafowl at the Society’s ninth exhibition in 1900. He would go on to paint several more peafowl screens, including a pair now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (1908); his most famous recorded work is perhaps a set of fusuma (sliding doors) depicting cranes, pines, bamboo, and plum trees painted in 1912 for the Shobikan Guest House when it was moved from the Imperial Palace in Kyoto to the Heian Shrine. His son Mochizuki Gyokusei would show works in a much more contemporary manner at the Teiten national exhibition in 1928 and 1930.
Like the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s screens, this pair melds diverse styles, separated in time and place: Yamato-e, a Japanese painting tradition dating back to medieval times and championed by Gyokkei’s father’s lineage; the Maruyama-Shijō school’s combination of dramatic use of space with careful naturalism, developed in Kyoto from the middle of the Edo period (1615–1868); detailed bird-and-flower painting in the Chinese manner, brought to Japan by Chinese painters resident in Nagasaki during the eighteenth century; and Western perspective, which was becoming increasingly influential on practitioners of the new art of Nihonga (neo-nativist painting) during the last years of the Meiji era.
The meticulous depiction of the five ducks recalls other birds seen in the work of eighteenth-century Kyoto masters who were in turn influenced by the Nagasaki artists and their imitators, while in both overall form and detailed brushwork the snow-laden pine tree in the left-hand screen was directly inspired by one of two pines in the left-hand screen of Pine Trees in the Snow, a celebrated masterpiece by Maruyama Okyo (1733–1795) in the Mitsui Memorial Museum. Even more than the Metropolitan screens, this pair makes dramatic use of Western-style perspective through skillful handling of the ripples in the river and foreshortening of the snow-covered bank on the opposite shore. As if countering this imported element, the snow falling from a branch of the pine tree appears frozen in time, an effect often observed in scrolls by Suzuki Kiitsu (1796–1858) and other later artists in the Rinpa manner of abstracted painting of nature. Executed against a background of carefully modulated gold wash (which incidentally is very similar to the Metropolitan screens), these screens are thus a grand synthesis of numerous artistic trends at an exciting moment in the evolution of twentieth-century Japanese painting.
REFERENCE
Nichigai Asoshiētsu 日外アソシエーツ, Bijutsuka jinmei jiten: Kokon, Nihon no bukko gaka 3500nin 美術家人名事典：古今・日本の物故画家3500人 (Japanese Artists: A Biographical Dictionary of 3500 Painters Past and Present). Tokyo: Nichigai Asoshiētsu 日外アソシエーツ, 2009, p. 582: for both Gyokkei and his father Gyokusen.
Melanie Trede (ed.), Arts of Japan: The John C. Weber Collection, Berlin: Museum für Ostasiatische Kunst, 2006, pp. 152–153 (cat. no. 45), reproduces the white peafowl screens now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Online
Metropolitan Museum of Art
www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/78229
Discussion of a pair of six-panel folding screens of white peafowl in the Met collection, dated 1908 and showing many similarities to the present work.
kyoto-okazaki.jp/spot/2020/03/21877/
Mentions the Shōbikan paintings.