Dried Fish and Mice | Nagasawa Rosetsu 長澤芦雪 | 1754-1799

The pre-eminent painter of his time, Maruyama Ōkyo (1733–1795), had many outstanding pupils who carried on his artistic legacy. The entire 19th century continued to draw on his great achievements as a realist and as a painter with a penchant for idealisation. However, such a genius also provokes counter-reactions. Three eccentrics of that era are often mentioned – Soga Shōhaku, Itō Jakuchū and Nagasawa Rosetsu – each of whom constructed a different alternative world. Rosetsu – as a direct pupil of Ōkyo – found it difficult to give in to his urge to follow his own, at times grotesque, paths. Many of his paintings betray his Maruyama School background. Yet when he turned entirely to his own vision in individual works, a great, independent expressive power was unleashed.

This is clearly the case with this enormous, dried fish suspended by its tail. Ōkyo also painted this motif (see the citation). Yet here, Rosetsu’s expressive power can be clearly gauged: Ōkyo depicts the fish lying down (at rest, i.e. undramatically). His brushwork, too, whilst free by his standards, is in places almost sketch-like and unrestrained. Yet Rosetsu surpasses his teacher with a wild, untamed stroke. The fish’s head displays a horribly distorted expression, the sort that the refined Ōkyo would never have sought to achieve.

Typical of Rosetsu is the wit with which he contrasts the horror on the fish’s face with a cute, nibbling little mouse with pink ears and a contemplative little mouse, which we see only from behind – another visual idea that we never find in the work of his master, Ōkyo.