Gaku or framed panel mounted with a painting on silk in mineral
pigments, sumi ink, and gofun or clam shell gesso depicting a bird (a Brown
Dipper or Cinclus Palasii) perched on the branch of an ancient willow tree with
the first catkins of spring. Signed on the lower right corner by the artist:
Fuzan, and sealed (Tasaki Fuzan, born 1889). The frame of roiro mirror-polished,
black lacquer. Late TaishŠ– early ShÅwa era, circa 1920 – 1940.
Tasaki Fuzan was born in 1889 in the village of Tsunetoyo in Fukushima
Prefecture. He moved to Tokyo and studied under Kawai GyokudÅ. Fuzan first had a
painting accepted into the government-sponsored exhibitions at the 1st Teiten in
1919. He returned to the 3rd Teiten in 1921 and then did not exhibit at these
venues again for ten years, until the 10th Teiten in 1931. He continued to
exhibit frequently in the following years: at the 11th – 14th Teiten Exhibitions
from 1930 – 1933, and at the Bunten Kansaten in 1936. All of these works that he
exhibited during the 1930s are large-scale, framed paintings on naturalist
themes.
Here Fuzan paints the earliest beginnings of spring. An ancient willow tree
stretches diagonally up and across the composition. Pale light warms the hollows
and plays around the quietly shadowed trunk. Worn by time, the bark’s cracks and
fissures seem to melt into the shadows. Its softly weathered surface contrasts
with the young branches bristling into the sky and the Brown Dipper watching the
horizon. Glowing tips of pussy willows halo the composition and auger the
changing season.
71 ½†high x 95 ¼†wide. |
