Kakemono Autumn Mountain Landscape

Snow-covered peaks rise blue-gray into the sky, while below them rugged rock faces tower upward, at whose edges individual larches in luminous orange and yellow announce the arrival of autumn – an appealing contrast between cool distance and warm foreground.

The painter deploys the autumnal leaf colors deliberately sparingly, so that they shine all the more brightly amid the rock formations rendered predominantly in ink. A small stream leads the eye down from the mountains into the lower part of the composition. The work was created in the Shôwa period on paper; the jikusaki ends are made of plastic.

Autumn mountain landscapes are among the most popular subjects of Japanese sansui painting, as they poetically capture the changing of the seasons and the transience of nature. This kakemono impresses with its clear pictorial structure and skillful balance between color and restraint.