Wintry Landscape with Trees – (Uragami Shunkin) ◄ Previous Next ►

Artist: Uragami Shunkin

Date: 1833

Size: 29 x 17 cm

Technique: Silk

This intimate, miniature landscape painting—of the variety Uragami Shunkin’s famous father, Gyokudō, also sometimes created—captures the somber mood of a mountain village in late autumn at dusk. In a painting style learned from his father from an early age, employing repeating sharp horizontal strokes to build up the shapes of trees and peaks, the artist contrasts the textures of the rocky outcrops in the foreground with the dreamy mountain peaks in the distance. By the time he created this painting in 1833, Shunkin had already established himself as a Literati painter conversant in the related arts of poetry, calligraphy and playing the koto (Chinese: qin), the musical instrument that had been one of his father’s fortes. Shunkin, who was active in the intellectual and literary circle of Rai Sanyō (1780–1832) and others in Kyoto, also achieved a reputation as a connoisseur of antique paintings, calligraphies, inkstones, and metalwork, all of which he collected himself.As he often did, Shunkin added a Chinese verse in his expert calligraphy to complement and poeticize this painting. Here he brushed four five-character lines that read:木落泉源露草枯山骨癯冷々斜陽影冷々斜陽影層峰半有無Fallen leaves reveal the source of the streamWithered grasses expose the bones of the mountainCool diagonal shadows are cast by the sinking sun.Myriad peaks are half hidden, half seen.(Trans. Xiaohan Du)