Bull | Mitsui Takayoshi 三井高福 | 1808-1885 (painted as a 70-year-old)

Everyone in Japan primarily associates the name Mitsui with one of Japan's largest and oldest banking institutions. Takayoshi was the eighth-generation head of the Mitsui business family. The company was founded in the 17th century. Takayoshi's achievement was to establish good economic relations with the imperial court at the end of the Tokugawa shogunate, thus saving the large company into the new era of the Meiji period (1868-1912). He is considered the founder of the First National Bank of Japan and consolidated the ancient family business during politically and culturally challenging times.

It may come as a surprise that a businessman of his caliber was also an outstanding painter. Nothing about this painting seems amateurish. It shows a resting cow, but the visible body shape is not realistically formulated, but rather clearly developed from the circle. Circle painting is of great importance in the Zen world. It is the most concentrated expression of wholeness—a single brushstroke where beginning and end meet—and, at the same time, of emptiness, which the painted circle encloses.

Whether the cow's body profile was painted with a single stroke is not entirely clear. In any case, the fraying end of the stroke appears (intentionally or not) almost like the cow's shaggy tail. The horns and cheek markings, in turn, are more calligraphic strokes than narrative representations. In general, this brushwork places us on the borderline between "image and sign," between "painting and calligraphy." Such an approach goes far beyond amateurism.

The mount of the picture has a few small stains, but it has not been replaced because the ensemble of picture and silk mount is very harmonious.