Kakejiku with Broad Waterfall by Keinen IMAO

A broad waterfall painted in ink on silk, filling almost the full width of the picture. Two darker bands of wash frame a wide central column of bare silk, and the falling water is built up from soft vertical gradations, with no rocks or banks shown. At the top, where the water breaks over the edge, the ink is broken into rippling highlights. Lower down the streams merge and fade into pale mist. The work is mounted in green silk brocade woven in gold with small auspicious motifs over a seigaiha wave ground, with cream cloud-patterned bands above and below the painting, and turned dark wooden roller ends (jikusaki). It is kept in a wooden box with a paper label inscribed Eikan no ga, Bakufu (Waterfall, painted by Eikan).

IMAO Keinen, given name Eikan, was born in Kyoto in 1845. He trained first under the ukiyo-e painter Umegawa Tokyo from 1855, and from 1858 under Suzuki Hyakunen. He entered the Kyoto Prefectural School of Painting in 1880, became a professor there in 1888, and chaired the Kyoto Goso Kyokai from its founding. His album Keinen Kacho Gafu (1892) established his reputation for precise bird-and-flower painting based on sketching from life. At the world's fairs he won an honorary award in Chicago (1893), a silver medal in Paris (1900) and a gold medal in St. Louis (1904). He was appointed Imperial Household Artist (Teishitsu Gigeiin) in 1904, served as a juror for the first Bunten in 1907, and became a member of the Imperial Fine Arts Academy in 1919. He was a leading figure of the conservative wing of the Kyoto art world, and his pupils included Konoshima Okoku.

Compare:

• IMAO Keinen, Waterfall (Bakufu-zu), c. 1907, hanging scroll, ink on silk, Yamagata Museum of Art (Hasegawa Collection)

• IMAO Keinen, Pine, Cherry and Small Bird, hanging scroll, ink and colour on silk, Niigata Prefectural Museum of Modern Art

• IMAO Keinen, Pines, Waves, and Mountains, 1916, hanging scroll, ink and colour on silk, Princeton University Art Museum

Condition: Very good; the silk evenly toned with age; a few small dark specks, chiefly in the lower half.