Snowy Landscape

Along with Gion Nankai (cat. no. 153) and Yanagisawa Kien (1706–1758), Sakaki Hyakusen (1697–1752) is regarded as one of the pioneers of the nanga movement.[1] Hyakusen's birthplace is still unknown, but it is generally believed that his father was a wealthy pharmacist in Nagoya. He appears to have studied literature, specializing in haikai, or haiku, a distinctly Japanese verse form of seventeen syllables, which gave him an entree to literary circles. Hyakusen is said to have received training in the Kano school of painting, but it is a style he soon rejected. Even his earliest dated work, executed in 1720, reveals few traces of Kano influence. Rather, it reflects the principles and techniques of the Chinese tradition. Sometime before 1728, Hyakusen moved to Kyoto, where he quickly acquired a reputation as a painter. Gion Nankai is credited with indirectly encouraging Hyakusen to shift from the aesthetics of the Kano school to those of nanga, having supposedly given him a copy of the Kaishien gaden (The Mustard-Seed Garden Manual), which inspired the young artist. Nevertheless, it is questionable that a single book could have determined Hyakusen's course as a painter.

Hyakusen is among the most difficult of the nanga painters to appreciate. He experimented with a variety of techniques, seldom pursuing one for any length of time, and stylistic diversity characterizes his oeuvre. Hyakusen painted everything from haiga, spontaneous cartoonlike sketches made to accompany haikai, to monumental compositions executed in the Chinese manner. Perhaps because of his accomplishments in haiga, and in other styles more traditionally Japanese, he was awarded the title hokkyō. A similar eclecticism marks the work of other nanga artists, perhaps because their knowledge of literati subjects and brushwork, rather than deriving from the work of the Chinese literati, was based on anything Chinese that they happened upon. Chinese influences on nanga also included the fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Zhe school of professional painters, whose approach to painting was more or less the antithesis of literati painting. The stylistic diversity of the early nanga practitioners thus in many ways reflects the school's restless, searching spirit.

Hyakusen was crucial to the development of nanga, less perhaps through his work than through his artistic activities. He encouraged aspiring young painters such as Yosa Buson (cat. nos. 155, 156) and published books on the Chinese tradition, including a catalogue of paintings and calligraphy from the Yuan, Ming, and Qing dynasties and an anthology of biographies of Yuan and Ming painters.[2]

James Cahill, in his 1983 study, discerns in Hyakusen's work the strong and persistent influence of late Ming painting, particularly styles prevalent in Suzhou, in southern China. He also suggests that a technical breakthrough in Hyakusen's landscape painting occurred in the 1740s. Until the early years of that decade, Hyakusen was concerned primarily with surface details, relying mainly on hemp-fiber strokes and repetitive, lively dotting. In the mid-1740s, the shun become broader and are often used for shading, to distinguish one surface area from another; dabs of ink adhere more firmly to contour lines, and dotting is less frequently employed. Shading in pale ink, applied to broader areas, marks works from Hyakusen's final period, the late 1740s until his death, in 1752. Some of the paintings from this period are strongly reminiscent of the vibrant, contorted rocks and mountains of such Suzhou artists as Xie Shichen (1487–ca. 1567).[3]

Snowy Landscape is dated by inscription to "Kōshi kajitsu" (a summer's day, the Year of the Rat), which corresponds to 1744. Hyakusen has painted a Chinese winter landscape, the mountains and trees blanketed with snow beneath a menacing sky. A hillock at bottom center, from which tall trees rise upward to the foot of the massive mountains, serves to connect foreground and background. The earlier hemp-fiber strokes have given way to dots of black and gray ink applied over light washes, creating a sense of mass and volume. The painting is among the earliest works from the 1740s to display Hyakusen's new technique.

[Miyeko Murase 2000, Bridge of Dreams]

[1] For studies on the life of Hyakusen, see "Hyakusen" 1939; Uetani Hajime 1960, pp. 483–90; and Nagoya City Museum 1984.
[2] See, respectively, Sakaki Hyakusen 1777 and Sakkai Hyakusen 1751.
[3] Cahill 1983.

Signature: Koshi kajitsu Bo Shin'en sha

Marking: Seal: Bo Shin'en in

[ Yabumoto Shōgorō Japanese, Osaka, Japan; until November 1968, sold to Mr. and Mrs. Burke]; Mary and Jackson Burke Foundation , New York (until 2015; donated to MMA)

New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Masterpieces of Japanese Art from The Mary Griggs Burke Collection," March 30–June 25, 2000.

Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, University of California at Berkeley. "Hinges: Sakaki Hyakusen and the Birth of Nanga Painting," October 2, 2019–February 2, 2020.

Murase, Miyeko, Il Kim, Shi-yee Liu, Gratia Williams Nakahashi, Stephanie Wada, Soyoung Lee, and David Sensabaugh. Art Through a Lifetime: The Mary Griggs Burke Collection. Vol. 1, Japanese Paintings, Printed Works, Calligraphy. [New York]: Mary and Jackson Burke Foundation, [2013], p. 255, cat. no. 309.

White, Julia M., Felice Fischer, Tomokatsu Kawazu, and Kyoko Kinoshita, eds. Hinges: Sakaki Hyakusen and the Birth of Nanga Painting. Exh. cat. Oakland, California: University of California, Berkeley, 2019, pp. 26, 46, 52, 53, 68, cat. no. 1.