Landscape in the Blue-and-Green Manner

Landscape in the Blue-and-Green Manner

Yanagisawa Kien

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Although the landscape is packed with cliffs, boulders, an assortment of trees, and mountains, the viewer is invited to travel the rugged terrain along the stream that begins with distant waterfalls at the top before meandering the length of the narrow composition all the way to the foreground. Two dense inscriptions in the uppermost register fill the composition’s only open space. The inscription at right includes three poems brushed by Yanagisawa Kien. The inscription at left, however, written five years after his death, includes six poems by the literati painter Miyazaki Kinpo (1717–1774). An early leader of the Nanga movement, Kien taught painting to literati artists Ike Taiga (1723–1776) and Kimura Kenkadō (1736–1802) in their youths.

Asian Art

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Landscape in the Blue-and-Green MannerLandscape in the Blue-and-Green MannerLandscape in the Blue-and-Green MannerLandscape in the Blue-and-Green MannerLandscape in the Blue-and-Green Manner

The Met's collection of Asian art—more than 35,000 objects, ranging in date from the third millennium B.C. to the twenty-first century—is one of the largest and most comprehensive in the world. Each of the many civilizations of Asia is represented by outstanding works, providing an unrivaled experience of the artistic traditions of nearly half the world.