Deer in Moonlight | Mori Tetsuzan 森 徹山 | 1775–1841

Mori Tetsuzan was adopted by his uncle Mori Sosen, the great animal painter. He was instructed by both his uncle and his father, but received his advanced training in painting from the artistic genius Maruyama Ōkyo. Given the dates, this must have been only a brief period, as Ōkyo died in 1795 when Tetsuzan was just twenty years old. Painters in those days were trained quickly and intensively—often they were already working professionally by the age of 15. We have no exact information on when Tetsuzan was accepted into Maruyama Ōkyo’s studio, but he has been counted (among several hundred students) as one of Ōkyo’s “Ten Best Students” since the 19th century.

Like his uncle Sosen, Tetsuzan was also interested in animal painting, though he did not devote himself exclusively to this genre. He was not primarily concerned with the keen observation of nature characteristic of his uncle or of Maruyama Ōkyo. He was a painter who was always fascinated by the elegant rendering of his subject.

A neck as distinctly and gracefully curved as that of this deer is not found in the works of his teachers. Nor does the animal seem to be standing firmly on the ground—rather, it appears to float slightly, thanks to the subtly varied positions of its legs. Very little of the surroundings is depicted; one senses reeds and a landscape in the distance, but such background details were not important to the painter. Only the flow of the lines had to be enchanting in his depiction of the animal… Nothing else mattered much.