Studio: international art (49.1910)

Contemporary Japanese Painting

“taken by surprise” (screen painting)

in the midst of a carousal. The mode of rendering
is unmistakably of the Tosa School. The com-
position may be criticised as wanting in centre,
but, like all our ancient war painting on scrolls, the
chief object of the picture is to delineate the move-
ments of men and horses. We know of many
contemporary artists, professedly followers of the
Tosa School, who have taken to the painting of
war scenes, but so far as our observations have
gone, they have mostly fallen into formalism.
Compared with their productions Mr. Otake’s
painting here under review, though treated after
the Tosa style, is endowed with many praiseworthy
qualities, among others a faithful rendering
of the human form, and power and facility of
strokes. The painter is still in the prime of man-
hood ; in fact it was only fifteen or sixteen years
ago that his talent was first recognised by the
artistic public, who were much struck by some
figure painting which on one occasion he displayed
at an exhibition in Tokyo. He was then set down
as a painter of great promise, and his subsequent
career has not belied the public expectations. At
times, it is true, his ready brush has led him into
eccentricities, but he has wisely controlled himself
in his present work.

Last but not least comes Mr. Shunso Hishida,
who decorated the gallery of the last exhibition
with a screen-painting entitled Fallen Leaves, de-
picting part of a forest. As a contrast to Mr.
Otake’s picture this piece shows the still side of
nature, there being not the faintest sign of the
activity which is conspicuous in the other painting.
The method of execution is at once minute and
naturalistic. Mr. Hishida was once connected

BY KOKKWAN OTAKE

with the Bijutsuin (Art Institute), and studied
under the late Mr. Gaho Hashimoto. He has
also been an ardent practiser of a Western method.
Some years ago, in company with Mr. Taikwan
Yokoyama, another painter of the Institute, he
made a tour abroad. In those days there was a
class of artists who essayed to embody in their
work the elements of Indian art, and Mr. Hishida
was one of the class. For a time, too, he gave his
chief thoughts to colouring, but of late he has
looked more to form ; and this devotion resulted
in the painting so exquisitely finished and natural-
istic which he displayed in the last exhibition.
Unquestionably this picture was drawn with a
decorative purpose. In olden times Japan had
many painters who delineated natural objects
in a decorative way, foremost of all, Kwoetsu,
Kworin, and Hoitsu. Their productions, however,
decorative as they are, are generally full of poetic
feeling. , Mr. Hishida’s painting has yet to rise to
the nobility of these classic masters; at best his
Fallen Leaves speaks of the pains he has taken in
giving a minute finish of a realistic type. The
colouring, adequately subdued and harmonious,
is probably the happiest feature of the painting,
which, all things considered, may be taken as well
representing the realistic side of the New School.

Passing to the side of the Old Schools, we
found in the last exhibition a commendable mono-
chrome picture entitled Snowy Landscape, by
Mr. Suiun Komuro, a production of the Chinese
style of the Southern stamp. The artist was a
pupil of the late Mr. Soun Tazaki of the Chinese
School, who enjoyed considerable fame some twenty
years ago. Mr. Komuro, though yet comparatively

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