Lot 201: Yokoyama Taikan (1868-1958) and Hishida Shunso

Yokoyama Taikan (1868-1958) and Hishida Shunso (1874-1911) Bakufu (Waterfall) Right painting signed and sealed Taikan ; left painting signed Shunso and sealed Shunso in Pair of hanging scrolls; ink and color on silk 36 3/4 x 16 1/4 in. (93.2 x 33.7 cm.) each Wood box titled, signed and sealed by Taikan. Taikan: registration no. ke dai 59 go on verso of the Taikan scroll mount certified by the Yokoyama Taikan Kinenkan. Shunso: certificate by Hishida Haruo (Shunso's first son) dated 1948.4 and by Hishida Shun (the third son) dated 1992.8 (2)

PUBLISHED: Murata Masahiro and Takahashi Shuji, eds., Hishida Shunso ten (Hishida Shunso exhibition) (Aichi: Hishida Shunso ten jikko iinkai, Aichiken bijutsukan, Chunichi shimbunsha, Tokai terebi hoso, 2003), pls. 35-1&2. Yokoyama Taikan kinenkan and Otomo Tsuneyuki, eds., Yokoyama Taikan zoku I (Meiji/Taisho) (Yokoyama Taikan: additional volume 1, Meiji and Taisho periods) (Tokyo: Dainippon kaiga, 1993), p. 40. (Taikan) It is rare to find these two famous and talented modern Japanese painters working in collaboration. Taikan and Shunso were rivals as well as friends, and in 1898 they were founding members of the Japan Art Institute in Tokyo, a center for research and exhibition of Nihonga under the direction of Okakura Kakuzo (Tenshin). Shunso took the lead in creating a daring and controversial new "hazy" style of painting without contours, intended to capture atmospheric changes at dawn or dusk, in mist or fog, as in this diptych. The diptych was painted just before Shunso and Taikan left for India in early 1903 where the wealthy Tagore family arranged for an exhibition of their work in Calcutta. The painting exemplifies the Nihonga synthesis of nativist sentiment and Western spatial concepts. For another example of a waterfall by Taikan painted in collaboration with Shunso around 1901-02, see Iijima Isamu, ed., Yokoyama Taikan, vol.10 of Kindai no bijutsu (1972), pl. 3.