Pond at Ikaho

The subject is taken from the legend of Mt. Haruna, in which the wife of a feudal lord reverts to her former from as a serpent before disappearing into the waters. Exhibited in the sixth Teiten (Imperial Art Academy Exhibition), it shows Eikyu’s distinctive Romanticism.

With the Japanese classical scholar Inoue Michiyasu and the folklorist Yanagida Kunio as elders brothers, Matsuoka Eikyu was raised in an academic environment and loved history painting even as a young boy. He first studied under Hashimoto Gaho of the Kano school but apprenticed himself to Yamana Tsurayoshi to study yamato-e. After graduating at the top of his class from the Tokyo Fine Arts School, he became professor there and helped train many artists. In 1921, he established the Shinko Yamato-e-kai (Association for the Revival of Yamato-e), with the goal of creating a new yamato-e that would effectively apply tradition to today. Based on his study of classical literature and the ancient customs and manners of the court and military, Eikyu investigated history and genre painting with a fresh, new sensibility. At the same time, however, some feel that the revolutionary nature of his art lay rather in his yamato-e landscapes, which he based on sketches made on-site from the actual scenery, and that he unfortunately died before he could develop this direction further. The theme of Pond at Ikaho is a legend that tells of the wife of a feudal lord during the period of warfare and social change in Japan in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, who reverted to her former form, a serpent, and disappeared into the waters of Ikaho Swamp deep in Mt. Haruna. It is a work that shows Eikyu’s distinctive Romanticism. In his expression of the mountains and the plants and flowers, Eikyu has presented a realistic rendering of nature as it actually exists using the methods of the yamato-e. (Writer : Misato Shimazu Source : Selected Masterpieces from The University Art Museum, Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music: Grand Opening Exhibition, The University Art Museum, Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music, 1999)