Winter Landscape, Hashimoto Kansetsu

Exhibition Label: "Nature/Natural," Jan-2014, Kris Ercums Hashimoto Kansetsu was a prominent Japanese painter of the early 20th century. Growing up in a family of literati scholars, Kansetsu cultivated an abiding interest in Chinese history, poetry, painting, and calligraphy. Throughout his artistic career, he traveled to China and Europe and developed a signature style of literati painting that integrated his knowledge of Chinese classical literature and art with Western painting techniques. This screen depicts a winter landscape, and is paired with a companion screen depicting a summer landscape (not displayed here). Winter and summer landscapes are popular motifs in literati painting. The winter scene, in particular, mirrors Confucian values of perseverance symbolized in the large, jagged rocks and tall evergreen pine trees standing stalwart in the midst of cold winter. Two thatched huts tucked into the mountain landscape serve as retreat houses for scholars escaping the harsh realities of political life. Kansetsu’s expressive brushwork also reflects the literati spirit of spontaneity. Yet, Kansetsu infuses his work with a modern sensibility by utilizing Western concepts of space to delineate form. Exhibition Label: "Asian Gallery," Jul-2003, Youmi Efurd Hashimoto Kansetsu was born in Kobe to a family of literati scholars who valued Chinese studies and practiced poetry, painting, and calligraphy. His father’s reputation as a scholar drew many visitors to the house-Chinese, Korean, and Western in addition to Japanese-so that Kansetsu was raised in an unusually cosmopolitan environment. This pair of screens reflects his Nanga (Chinese literati tradition) style in the 1920s, a decade in which he was preoccupied with Chinese art. The landscape motifs and expressive brushwork of this set of screens reflect Kansetsu’s deep love for the China of his mind. At the same time, these paintings reveal his ability to look afresh at familiar themes as he draws on Western concepts of space to delineate form. Archive Label 2003: Hashimoto Kansetsu was born in Kobe to a family of literati scholars who valued Chinese studies and practiced poetry, painting, and calligraphy. His father’s reputation as a scholar drew many visitors to the house - Chinese, Korean and Western as well as Japanese - so that Kansetsu was raised in an unusually cosmopolitan environment. As an adult Kansetsu traveled widely, visiting China frequently and Europe twice. His work reflects these multiple influences. Kansetsu brushed most of his nanga or literati style paintings such as Summer and Winter Landscapes in the 1920s, a decade in which he was preoccupied with Chinese art. The landscape motifs and expressive brushwork of this set of screens reflect Kansetsu’s deep love for the China of his mind. At the same time, these paintings reveal his ability to look afresh at familiar themes as he draws on Western concepts of space to delineate form. Hashimoto Kansetsu was born fifteen years after the Meiji Restoration and died during the height of the U.S. bombing of Japan in 1945. He lived through the turbulence of Japan’s expansionist activities throughout the first half of the twentieth century, and his life and work reflected the complexities and contradictions of the period. He was at once a highly acclaimed painter and critic, a prosperous cosmopolitan, a scholar immersed in the study of ancient Chinese paintings, and a fervent nationalist who used his talents to support the war effort. For centuries, Chinese scholars had painted and collected ink monochrome landscapes as a retreat from the harsh realities of political life. In the context of Hashimoto Kansetsu’s life and times, Summer and Winter Landscapes stands as an eloquent statement of belief, a pure landscape of the mind, in the midst of the harsh realities of war, propaganda, and political turmoil in early-twentieth-century Asia.