| Popis: |
It has been known that the imported Ming and Ch'ing paintings and the painters who came from China had strong influence on the nanga type paintings of Edo Period Japan. One hundred and thirtyone Chinese painters who came to Japan in the Edo Period are referred to in certain books of the Edo and Meiji Periods. However, little is known about the activities in Japan of a large number of them, and as for some of them, no works are known whatsoever. On the other hand, the works of some of these painters remain, but they have not drawn much attention from present-day art historians. Here, in this paper, the author takes up three painters of this kind, namely TS AI Chien 蔡簡, HSIEH Shihchung 謝時中 and WAN Ku-shan 王古山, and discusses questions concerning them. TS'AI Chien has been known only as the artist of an ink painting of plum blossoms mentioned in Sōhō-kaku Shoga Meishin Roku written by Baidō ASANO, a scholar of Chinese painting and calligraphy at the end of the Edo Period. But, as a matter of fact, Baidō's handwritten draft called Gampuku Roku, which is a record of his apreciation of painting and calligraphy, contains sketches of two paintings by TS'AI Chien, that is, a plum blossom painting in ink and a plum-and-bamboo painting. The inscription on “Bodhidharma aboard a Reed” (PI. II) by him, which was recently recovered, tells us that he was associated with the Fukusaiji in Nagasaki City with which many Chinese people from Fu-chou in Fukien Province had a relationship. On the other hand, Saiyū Nichibo, a travel diary of Nanko HARUKI who travelled to Nagasaki in the fall of 1788, contains a sketch of a plaque used in the Fukusaiji with carved Chinese characters based on TS'AI Chien's handwriting. The date carved in the sketched plaque indicates that TS'AI Chien was in Nagasaki in the fall of 1655. Further, the plumand-bamboo painting sketched in Gampuku Roku has the date of 1652. From these facts and other materials one is led to believe that he was a man from Ch‘üan-chou, Fukien, who was good at landscapes, figures and flower-and-bird paintings and that he came to Japan perhaps with Priest Yün-ch‘ien Chieh-wan in 1649 and stayed in Nagasaki until the fall of 1657. The name of HSIEH Shih-chung has been known through “Orchids and Rocks” which was reproduced in Vol. 3 of Shōsan Rindō Shoga Bumbō Zuroku, an illustrated catalogue of the collection of Beian ICHIKAWA, an Edo Period calligrapher. The painting is now kept by Tokyo National Museum. Five paintings by HSIEH Shih-chung, including this piece, are known of which two are joint works with LIN Tao-jung (1640-1708), a Chinese interpreter who worked at Nagasaki. One of the five pieces has an inscription which states that he executed it in 1674 in Nagasaki. Gampuku Roku by Baidō has a note that he came from China and died in Nagasaki. Other authors like Kidō WASHIZU and Hanamori SHIBATA mentioned that he came from China, but his career in Japan is not known. While “Po-i and Shu-chi‘Dwelling in the Mountains” (PI. III) and “Orchids and Rocks” show some influence from the Che School style of the Ming Period, the joint works with LIN Tao-jung are figure pantings which show professional skill. He must have been a professional painter who was associated with the Fukusaiji. He was a man of Fu-ch'ing-hsien, Fukien Province. WAN Ku-shan's only known extant work is “Conversation in Stream-side Arbor” (PI. I). Baido's Gampuku Roku contains sketches of two pictures from an album of flower paintings by this artist. The inscription on “Conversation in Stream-side Arbor” states that it was painted at an inn in Nagasaki in the second month of the twenty-sixth year of the Chien-lung Era. That means he stayed in Nagasaki in 1761. This inscription also tells us that the artist's first name was K‘uei 奎 and one of his pseudonyms was Ku-shan. The general colouring and depictions of some details in his picture are somewhat close to Taiga IKENO's works and Buson YOSA's works in the period when he signed using the pseudonym of Shunsei. Although there is now no concrete evidence which connects WANG Ku-shan and these two Japanese painters, it may be useful material for the study of the development of Edo Period nanga type painting. |
