Untitled

Watanabe Kazan

19th century · Hanging scroll; ink and color on paper · Asian Art

Tachihara Suiken was the father of a close friend of Kazan's. The completed work is now lost, but several surviving sketches reveal that the artist rejected the concealment of physical defects in favor of a sympathetic realism. In this sketch, the only embellishments that refer to the subject's social status are his sword and the book tucked into his robe. His shriveled mouth and unshaven chin, adroitly captured by the Western technique of chiaroscuro—which Kazan had studied—enhance the impression of intense self-determination made by this eighty-one-year-old samurai.

Artist

Watanabe Kazan

Date

19th century

Medium

Hanging scroll; ink and color on paper

Culture

Japan

Department

Asian Art

Credit line

The Harry G. C. Packard Collection of Asian Art, Gift of Harry G. C. Packard, and Purchase, Fletcher, Rogers, Harris Brisbane Dick, and Louis V. Bell Funds, Joseph Pulitzer Bequest, and The Annenberg Fund Inc. Gift, 1975