Untitled

Okada Hankō

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

This gentle, unassuming picture depicts a seaside village at dawn as the mist gradually clears from the mountains and treetops. The lone scholar at the bottom of the composition seems to walk toward, not away from, the viewer, an anomaly in an otherwise tradition-bound painting that depicts a narrow gorge and a small port in a steeply rising vertical composition. Hankō, son and pupil of Okada Beisanjin, grew up within the literati circle gathered around his father. Earning their living as rice merchants, Hankō and his father could devote themselves to Confucian studies and, later in life, to the study of painting in the style of Chinese Ming and Qing masters.

Artist

Okada Hankō

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