ABSTRACT
In the discourse of the 1890s Tokyo art scene, virtuoso Tokyo School of Fine Arts professor Kawabata Gyokushō (1842–1913) advocated the necessity of a balance between shasei (sketching from nature) and sha-i (“ideational painting”) in Japanese painting. This paper examines Gyokushō’s approaches to the implementation of visual realism for two of his works: The Seikadō Screens and the depiction of the Nezame no toko Gorge. As main representative of the Maruyama style, which stood emblematic for the shasei approach, Gyokushō had successfully contrived his own pictorial gimmicks to invoke naturalisms and three-dimensionality—even when the depictions of poet Li Bai and historian Sima Guang adhered to century-old Chinese models. They feature in the carefully amalgamated compositions of a set of folding screens in the collection of the Seikadō Bunko Art Museum. When developing the landscape of the Nezame no toko Gorge, however, he chose to deviate from the actual topography. The role of shasei for the future of Japanese painting was key, Gyokushō argued, while others voiced concerns: How important were ink lines to signify a work as Japanese? Which degree of verisimilitude to nature was appropriate to transport the idea of a motif? Knowing that naturalism spoke to viewers within and outside Japan, Gyokushō was one of the most prominent painters to take on the challenge.
