Album of twelve Chinese-style landscapes

This is an album of delicately painted Chinese-style landscapes. In some, human figures are prominent, and in others human presence is only suggested by houses, bridges and gates surrounded by deep nature.

Each of the twelve paintings has a title, a signature and seals. Some of them have a title stating that it was painted in a particular style and techniques associated with artists from Yuan to Qing China, whose names and works were highly appreciated in Japan.

Chikutō was born in Nagoya. There he learnt painting under Yamada Kyūjō, who was keen to study classical Yuan and Ming Chinese paintings. Chikutō later went to Kyoto and became a respected painter of Chinese-style landscape and published books about treatises on painting. He is one of the most prominent artists of the so-called ‘literati painting (bunjin-ga)’ in the late Edo period.

There are interesting layers of evidence of appreciation in the album’s title slip, the storage box and the wrapping paper for the box. First, the title slip on the front cover has an inscription by Tanomura Chokunyū (1814-1907), an important artist and leader of ‘literati’ painters in the Meiji era. It reads ‘Twelve mounted small landscape paintings by the old man Chikutō Nakabayashi; Title slip written by Chokunyū Dōjin’. It might be the case that it was Chokunyū who had these twelve paintings mounted into an album.

Next comes the box. On the back side of the box lid is an inscription by Murata Kōkoku (1831-1912), another fine ‘literati painting’ artist. He praises Master Chikutō’s (Chikutō-sensei) sophisticated ink colours and unwavering brush control. This inscription includes the date of spring 1905, signed by Kōkoku at the age of seventy-five.

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