Shepherd with Cattle 牛と牛使い | Konoshima Ōkoku 木島桜谷 | 1877–1936

Konoshima Ōkoku was a versatile painter who was already highly regarded in his own time. He was one of the key artists who helped Japan forge a new identity. Around the turn of the 19th century, Japan had to grapple with the massive influx of European culture—a narrow-minded retreat into its own history and aesthetics was not the answer, nor was an uncompromising immersion in Western ways of thinking and expression.

Ōkoku studied the ancient, five-hundred-year-old tradition of Japanese and Chinese ink painting, but he sought to free himself from his models and forge a new path through his own free brushwork. This is particularly evident at first glance in the details of the ox and the farmer: the paper he uses is relatively rough (not soft and smooth like classic ink-painting paper). He allows the brush to soak up a generous amount of ink and initially outlines the heavy body of the ox with just two slow, intense brushstrokes. As a result, the strokes fray at the edges, lending the ox’s body an animalistic heaviness. However, another consequence of the highly absorbent paper is that the brush must be moved very quickly if one aims for a straight line. The stooped farmer is drawn with clear, linear strokes, yet this gives him a sketch-like quality.

This sketchy pace continues with the group of trees and is further intensified in the rendering of the foliage (are they willows?). Ōkoku works wildly and quickly with a broad brush and watery ink to create a mood of evening haze or even light evening rain. Upon closer inspection, this misty quality is particularly evident in the depiction of the moon, which dimly illuminates the entire scene. Here, only the finest shades of gray conjure up an incomparable atmospheric mood.

Ōkoku was famous for paying meticulous attention to the mounting of his paintings. He had silk woven featuring the designs of various seals he used. Here, the seal he used to authenticate the painting also appears as a woven motif on the brocade frames above and below the painting.