Fan painting of cattle | Tsuji Kakō (都路華香) | 1870–1930

Tsuji Kakō lived and worked in Kyoto. He served as director of the Municipal Art College, was a member of the Imperial Academy of Arts, and participated in many prestigious exhibitions (Bunten), where he won awards.

Tsuji Kakō never ceases to surprise with his original treatments of motifs and compositional structures. Here, he chooses the fan shape. He likely never imagined that this painting would ever be mounted as a fan and then used as an accessory; he was primarily drawn to the form itself.

At first glance, he does not seem to respond to the specific format at all—the fan shape is treated here like a window into the real world. Well, this world isn’t quite that real, however; it is real only insofar as the cattle are depicted relatively realistically and the baseline does not follow the curved line of the fan but remains horizontal. What is unreal, however, is the use of gold paint for the sky and foreground—it evokes luxury and preciousness, qualities associated with the “accessory quality” of a fan.

Regarding the exploration of format: It is likely no coincidence that the blue strip of water leads into the corner of the fan in almost the same way on both the left and right. From the perspective of format, one can also interpret the somewhat garish white cloud, which balances the black of the two cattle in the left half—and the black signature on the right does its part in corresponding with the cattle.

Despite the ostensibly “ordinary” veduta, this is clearly a multifaceted exploration of the theme of the fan in both essence and form.