Rock and Bamboo

Rock and Bamboo

Yanagisawa Kien

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This simple composition of a stand of bamboo bending over an angular, faceted rock is the work of Yanagisawa Kien, who created numerous paintings of bamboo, flowers-and-birds, and other subjects popular among artists of the early Nanga school. The bamboo was a favored motif among painters as a symbol of scholarly virtue and fortitude. Here, the monumental (in spite of its size) configuration of the rock, and the fluid, rhythmic handling of the brush in the treatment of the bamboo leaves, along with variations in the ink tones, suggest that the artist studied images from Chinese painting manuals introduced into Japan in the late seventeenth and eighteenth century. Yanagisawa Kien, who frequently used the “Chinese-sounding” name Ryū Rikyō, played an important role among early Nanga-school painters. He provided encouragement to aspiring artists like Ike Taiga (1723–1776), who would become a great master in the Nanga movement. He was also a man of letters, a calligrapher, and poet.

Asian Art

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

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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.