Object Details
- Description
- A narrow hanging scroll depicting a scholar and his young attendant making their way up a steep pathway toward a retreat, where another scholar gazes into the distance. The painting is executed spontaneously, in quick, repeated brush strokes. With an inscription, signature of the artist and three seals.
- Signatures
- Taiga's signature appears on the painting.
- Marks
- Three seals appear on the painting.
- Inscriptions
- The inscription quotes one line of a Chinese poem from the Tang dynasty, which can be rendered: "Layered peaks of great antiquity; trees one thousand meters high."
- Label
- In this steep landscape, a scholar and his young attendant make their way up a pathway toward a retreat where another scholar gazes into the distance. The painting is executed with quick brush strokes accented by dots and lines in black ink. The artist, Ike Taiga, who became a leading proponent of the Nanga school, which specialized in painting Chinese subjects, first learned his distinctive style by studying woodblock-printed manuals on Chinese painting techniques. Many of his landscapes, like this one, were expressions of an idealized way of life rather than portrayals of actual places. Here the inscription quotes a line from a Chinese poem with a slight variation through the substitution of one character: "Mountain ranges of great age; a thousand tiers of trees."
- Provenance
- By 1960 to 1962
- Yoshine Iida, acquired in Japan by 1960 [1]
- From 1962 to 1992
- Sanae Iida Reeves, Arligton, VA, by descent, in 1962 [2]
- From 1992
- Freer Gallery of Art, given by Mr. and Mrs. Douglas F. and Sanae Reeves, in 1992 [3]
- Notes:
- [1] Ownership of the object by the donor's father, Yoshine Iida, is recorded in the 1960 publication Ike Taiga sakuhin shu (see Curatorial Note 4, Ann Yonemura, June 30, 1992, in the object record).
- [2] See note 1.
- [3] Transferred from the Freer Study Collection to the Freer Permanent Collection on December 23, 1994 (see Curatorial Note 4, Elizabeth F. Duley, December 30, 1994, in the object record).
- Collection
- Freer Gallery of Art Collection
- Exhibition History
- Landscapes in Japanese Art (February 2 to July 15, 2007)
- Real and Imagined Places in Japanese Art (March 4 to October 21, 2001)
- Previous custodian or owner
- Iida Yoshine (1898-1960)
- Mr. and Mrs. Douglas F. and Sanae Reeves
- Data Source
- Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery
- Artist
- Ike Taiga 池大雅 (1723-1776)
- Inscription
- Box inscribed by Tomioka Tessai 富岡鉄斎 (1836-1924)
- Date
- ca. 1750-55
- Period
- Edo period
- Credit Line
- Gift of Sanae Iida Reeves in memory of her father, Iida Yoshine
- Medium
- Ink and light color on paper
- Dimensions
- H x W: 197.8 x 45.8 cm (77 7/8 x 18 1/16 in)
- Type
