Mountain Peak Green and Clear

Hayami Gyoshu (1894-1935) was born in Tokyo and studied under Matsumoto Fuko (1840-1923) who specialized in history painting. Gyoshu studied classic painting such as Yamato-e, Rimpa school, and Nanga, and demonstrated various styles in incredible diversity within his 40-year life. In this work, he painted the whole figure of the soaring mountain using a large screen created by joining a number of sheets. Red on some trees indicates that summer is ending and autumn is about to come. Chilly early morning after rain that stopped at the dawn, white mist is forming the imposing shape of belts from the halfway down to the foot of the mountain. Meanwhile, the top of the mountain is clear, showing the cloudless figure as Gyoshu named “Santou Suimei” (mountain peak green and clear). At the time of the creation, a critic commented it was “a mongrel of the Beiten technique of Nanga and post-Impressionism” (“Chuo Bijutsu” November 1915). Gyoshu was 21 when he created his first large-scale painting. This is an ambitious masterpiece in his early years and was submitted to the 2nd exhibition of the Japan Art Institute after the restoration.