Four Perfect Views of Waterfalls
Tanaka Raishō Japanese
Not on view
The grand scale of this quartet of waterfall paintings contributes to the overall dramatic effect of capturing the passage of four seasons. The verdant coloration for spring and summer scrolls on the right contrast with the highlight of orange-red foliage used to represent autumn, and the stark, white and almost monochrome grey-umber palette of the winter scene. Though long considered to be among the modern painter Tanaka Raishō’s masterpieces, its whereabouts has been unknown since it won “special recognition” (tokusen) at the Eleventh Bunten (Ministry of Education) Exhibition in 1917. The artist gave the work a Sinicized title Keibaku shichi, literally, “Four ideals of precipitous cascades.”
Tanaka Raishō achieved fame for his meticulously rendered landscapes, as well as for his animal subjects, all executed in the modernist idiom of traditional Japanese painting known as Nihonga, or subjects, all executed in the modernist idiom of traditional Japanese painting known as Nihonga, or “Japanese-style paintings,”, a term first used in the Meiji period (1868–1912) to distinguish such works from Yōga, or “Western-style paintings
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