松楼春暁 (Shōrō shungyō)|Pine Pavilion in the Spring Dawn

Ōkōchi Yakō 大河内夜江

1930s · Hanging scroll; ink and color on silk · Asian Art

Ōkōchi Yakō first learned to paint in Kyoto with Kikuchi Keigetsu 菊池契月 (1879–1955), a Nihonga artist affiliated with the Imperial Household before turning to a study of Nanga painting, especially the works of Tomioka Tessai (1837–1924) and Uragami Gyokudō (1745–1820). Ōkōchi’s study of these earlier masters of literati painting can be felt in this small picture of a rural retreat amid a grove of spindly pines, in which the artist captures the form and surface texture of the mountains and other rock forms with dry, detailed brushwork before highlighting them in deep azurite blue and malachite green, pigments that are often used in landscape paintings to suggest a paradisiacal locale.

Artist

Ōkōchi Yakō 大河内夜江

Date

1930s

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, 2021