柳沢淇園筆　竹石図|Rock and Bamboo

Yanagisawa Kien

18th century · Hanging scroll; ink and color on silk · Asian Art

Yanagisawa Kien demonstrates his mastery in this painting of bamboo and rocks. The confident brushwork appears spontaneous, yet subtle draft outlines reveal the artist’s meticulous compositional planning. A light blue wash—rare in Kien’s corpus—provides a backdrop to the monochrome elements in the foreground, enhancing the sense of spatial depth. Kien was born into a high-ranking samurai family. While serving as a feudal official he practiced a variety of artistic pursuits, excelling particularly in painting and calligraphy. He interacted widely with scholars and artists of his time, inspiring subsequent generations of literati painters in Japan.

Artist

Yanagisawa Kien

Date

18th century

Medium

Hanging scroll; ink and color on silk

Culture

Japan

Department

Asian Art

Credit line

Mary and Cheney Cowles Collection, Gift of Mary and Cheney Cowles, 2018