池(徳山)玉瀾筆 秋山水図扇面|Autumnal Landscape with a Waterfall

Ike (Tokuyama) Gyokuran

second half of the 18th century · Fan mounted as a hanging scroll; ink and color on paper · Asian Art

Ike Gyokuran was one of the best-known women artists of the Edo period. She grew up in Kyoto, where her family owned a tea shop and her mother and adoptive grandmother published waka poetry. Later, Gyokuran and her husband, the influential and prolific Nanga (literati) painter Ike Taiga (1723–1776), built their home and studio by Gion Shrine, east of Kyoto’s Kamo River. In this painting of an autumn landscape with crystalline foreground rocks before a background waterfall, the artist combines soft brush lines and angular, darkly inked, calligraphic strokes. Abundant short blue-green marks and pink dots indicate evergreen trees alongside the maples and other deciduous trees changing color in the mountains.

Artist

Ike (Tokuyama) Gyokuran

Date

second half of the 18th century

Medium

Fan mounted as a 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