Nanga
Triptych: 2 landscapes and a pine, rock and streamSigned: Ken shiga (r), Seiitsu (m) & Ken (l)
Seals: Azana wa Bunshi, Ranken, .., gakuzandô (m), ..
Technique: sumi on paper 131 x 47,9 (3x)
Date: 1873 (at the bottom of the box )
Mounting: cream damask 187,5 x 61,3
Box: inscribed
Condition: creases, otherwise very good
inscription remains unread
信天翁 Shinten'ô, “Albatross”, or kanji read seperately “The old man who trusts in heaven” was the go, pen name of Yamanaka Seiitsu. He was one of the key figures in the Kyoto literati world.
Seiitsu was born into a well-to-do and rather intellectual farming family near Nagoya. He studied calligraphy with Shinozaki Shôchiku (1781-1851), but as a painter he was mainly self-taught.
After his father’s death in 1848 he had to continue his studies at the local temple school. After the death of his younger brother his uncle sponsored his Confucian studies with Saitô Setsudô (1792-1865) for three years. Thereafter he studied Chinese literature with Yanagawa Seigan (1781-1859) and Umeda Unpin (1825-1865). With them he met with the royalists Rai Miisaburô and Fujimoto Tesseki (1817-1863) and they became friends. To avoid charges from the Bakufu he started to travel.
As a former member of the anti-Bakufu Imperial Loyalist movement, he received important governmental posts after the Meiji restoration, but, not yet fifty years old, he retired to devote his time to art and literati gatherings in his luxurious villa in Arashima.
Reference:
Addiss 1993
Kato ‘98 first chapter
Berry '01 p. 157-159
Hempel '98 pp. 169-170
Araki p. 1357
Price: ON REQUEST
