Sublime Depths of Streams and Mountains

This lush summer mountainous landscape in the Chinese "literati painting" (Nanga or bunjinga) style was done by an artist who passed away at the young age of thirty-one. The written inscription on the painting tells us the title, the location in Japan in which it was painted, and the date—just a year before his death.
Further information:
Using a composition based on his study of Chinese Ming and Qing dynasty landscapes, Takahashi Sohei constructs an imaginary scene of towering peaks, mist-filled gorges, and dense vegetation. A sharply uptilted rock ledge interrupts the rising hills to offers a view of the waterfall, reserved against darkly shadowed cliffs at the right. Hundreds of dots in varying tones of ink cover rocks and branches to suggest the lush foliage of summer.
At the base of the hills, two thatched buildings lie at the edge of a river. The inhabitants are setting off on a boat ride: the husband, a slight figure with a scholar's topknot and beard, poles the skiff for his wife, cradling an infant in the window of a woven enclosure. The surrounding tree branches echo her embrace, adding a touch of sweet humor to the scene. According to the painting's inscription, this quiet and tranquil scene of ideal scholar life was painted while the artist was traveling in Akamagaseki—an old name for Shimonoseki, at the southern tip of Japan's main island of Honshu.
Born to a merchant family in Bungo province in Kyushu, Sohei met the great literati master Tonomura Chikuden (1777–1835) in 1822, when the latter was traveling through the area. The following year he moved with Chikuden to Kyoto and joined his circle of literati friends. Sadly, the young artist's promising career was cut short by illness in his early thirties. Sohei's talent is apparent in this painting, created a year before his death.