Tiger | Kishi Ryūzan 岸龍山 | 1816-1889

The highly esteemed Kishi school began with Kishi Koma, commonly known as Ganku. He stands out in Japanese art history as the first painter to have the opportunity to portray a live tiger. His son, Gantai, continued the tradition of tiger paintings – alongside a highly talented painter in the Kishi studio, who was adopted by Ganku, a common practice to secure the "name" and the associated quality. The adopted son was allowed to call himself Kishi Ryūzan. After Ganku's death, his son Gantai and Ryūzan shared the leadership of the Kishi school and carefully maintained the tiger tradition.

Ganku's great achievement (made possible by his nature studies in the shogun's tiger cage) was the departure from the oversized house cat type that had dominated Japanese painting for centuries. The graphic representation of fur texture, teeth, and paws changed abruptly. However, a tiger is not just any predator; it has symbolized strength and power on Earth in Asia since ancient times.

Ryūzan shows his feline spreading its front legs in a frontal view, which gives it unwavering stability, because the outer lines of the prominent front legs virtually cross each other at the top in their extension, almost millimetrically in the center of the image width (see structural diagram). The longitudinal center is equally significant; at the right edge of the picture, it clearly coincides with the point of contact of the tiger's snout and on the left marks where the tiger's back enters the image format. Thus, the tiger's back and head form a compact curve from center to center.

Ryūzan chooses the perfect profile view for his tiger's head. In doing so, he follows the oldest tradition of graphically clear depictions of living beings (see Assyrian tigers, Egyptian paintings, early Attic vase painting, etc.). But with this side view, he can not only excellently show the terrible predatory teeth, but with the horizontal snout on the central axis of the picture, he also points beyond the picture itself. 

If we extend this central axis, it meets another very strong formal line of the picture: the alignment of the tip of the tail, from the bottom left upwards to the black paw pad of a hind leg slightly higher on the right, is very important for the basic composition of the motif. However, the extension of this diagonal line to the right intersects the extended central axis outside the picture – exactly at twice the width of the format. This tempts us to think of a second, exactly equally sized picture. This idea is not as far-fetched as it might initially seem, as tigers often form a diptych with a dragon image (ruler of the heavens and skies). This tiger here looks up to the right – at a dragon that, unfortunately, no longer exists?

If we had this "missing" dragon image, one could well imagine that a significant point of the composition was located in the middle of its right longitudinal side... a claw, the end of a tail... exactly where the tip of the snout is in the "doubled" tiger.

Is this merely speculation? Of course, no statements by the artist exist, but Japanese people have an unerring sense of proportion. They don't need a "shaku measuring rod" to identify the center of a picture side almost to the millimeter. That Ryūzan works with this in this picture is beyond doubt – whether he also works with the doubling of the width when halving the length and width cannot, of course, be proven. What is certain, however, is that the elementary formal principle of the triangle is effective here, which also governs the front legs.

In all these observations, it is most important to recognize that the painter knew that the grandeur of the tiger depends not only on its paws and teeth but also on a strong internal structure.