Signed and sealed at lower right Tekiho; sealed Mokubaian. Comes with the original double wooden tomobako storage boxes, the inner box of paulownia-wood inscribed outside Aketake sedo 明け行背戸 (Dawn in the Back Yard) and signed inside Tekiho jidai (Titled by Tekiho), with a seal.

Taking up a motif only occasionally depicted in Nihonga painting of the 1920s and 1930s, in this scroll Nishizawa Tekiho treats a stand of ripening corn growing behind a farmhouse as a group of monumental natural forms. The rhythmic verticality of the stalks and the luxuriant sweep of their sinuous foliage create an image poised between decorative design and natural observation. Simplified masses and emphatic patterns recall earlier painting in the Rinpa tradition, while the artist’s careful study of plant and avian life reflects the enduring conventions of East Asian kachō-e (bird-and-flower painting), emphasized by the inclusion of two lively sparrows flying near the top of the scroll. At right, a morning glory pushes its tendrils into the scene, its blossoms providing an opportunity to deploy luminous gunjō blue pigments alongside the varied tones of rokushō green pigments used to describe the corn leaves.
Introduced to Japan through trade with Portuguese or Chinese merchants around 1600, tōmorokoshi (“Chinese maize,” also known as Nanbankibi, “Southern Barbarian Millet”) for centuries remained something of a rarity among plants depicted in Japanese painting. It appears occasionally in the work of later Rinpa artists, most notably Sakai Hōitsu, who included towering stalks of corn and morning glories in his set of hanging scrolls Jūnikagetsu kachōzu (Twelve Months of Flowers and Birds) of 1823, now in the Imperial Collections. With its soaring stems, broad sinuous leaves, and feathery tassels, corn offered formal possibilities quite unlike those of native cereal crops. The plant featured in the work of several other leading Nihonga artists during the 1920s, including large-scale compositions shown at the Sixth and Tenth Teiten exhibitions by Yamaguchi Reiki and Fukuda Heihachirō in 1925 and 1929 respectively.

Born in Asakusa, Tokyo, Nishizawa Tekiho (birth name: Ishikawa Kōichi) studied under Araki Kanpo and later Araki Jippo, two prominent figures in the Tokyo painting world of the early twentieth century. He first exhibited at the Bunten National Art Exhibition in 1915 and continued to show regularly at the Bunten and its successor iterations almost every year for more than four decades. The bold design and brilliant palette of the present work recall his larger exhibition pieces, notably a pair of two-panel screens depicting crested pigeons and palm trees shown at the Thirteenth Teiten in 1932. Although celebrated as a painter during his lifetime, Tekiho is also known today for his lifelong devotion to the study and collection of Japanese dolls and toys. He became one of the field's leading scholars, publishing widely and promoting the preservation of doll culture in Japan and abroad. In recognition of these achievements, he was awarded the Medal with Purple Ribbon in 1959.