Deer

This painting depicts a deer scratching its cheek with its hind leg, and something like dust or grass around its feet in the pointillism style.
The painter, Mori Tetsuzan, was a nephew of Mori Sosen. Sosen was skilled at painting animals. Tetsuzan also studied under Maruyama Okyo, who was famous for his realistic paintings. The influence of Okyo is seen in the way the artist handles his brush in this work, contributing to the voluminous feeling of the deer and the texture of its coat.
The Japanese waka poem on the upper part of the painting was written by Tenjuin Miseko, the wife of the 8th lord of the Yanagawa domain. It says, ‘Autumn clover in the field is sure to bloom, I can hear a deer’s cry echoing in the mountain’. In classical Japanese poetry, bush clovers were sometimes alluded to as the ‘wife’ of the stag.