Young Ladies Planting Rice

Gyokudô painted this work the year after he was evacuated to Ôme. Focusing the composition into just a single trimmed corner of a field, he then stepped back into a bird's eye view. Leaving the ground color on the fields, he used spreading ink and puddled verdigris on the paths between the fields, while turning to the traditional horinuri technique of leaving the outlines exposed in the women's garments. As well as these traditional touches, the circles in the water around the feet and hands of the young women planting rice seedlings and the gentle waves on the water near the pathways reveal a realism drawn from life sketches of such scenes. This rustic farm scene has a calmness that belies the fact it was painted in the midst of wartime.