Rocks and Flowers 1817

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ink, color-on-paper

water colours

pastel soft colours

ink paper printed

pastel colours

japan

hand-embroidered

ink

color-on-paper

watercolour bleed

watercolour illustration

imprinted textile

layered pattern

watercolor

Dimensions: 8 3/4 × 19 3/4 in. (22.23 × 50.17 cm) (image)12 1/2 × 22 3/8 × 13/16 in. (31.75 × 56.83 × 2.06 cm) (outer frame)

Okada Beisanjin created this ink drawing, Rocks and Flowers, on paper, capturing a scene rich with natural symbolism. The rock, a recurring motif in Chinese and Japanese art, represents permanence, stability, and the unyielding forces of nature. Here, the rock is not barren, but adorned with blossoming flowers, suggesting a harmony between the enduring and the ephemeral. This echoes in other cultural contexts; imagine the classical ruins overgrown with vegetation, a testament to nature's reclamation of human constructs. The flowers themselves, bursting forth from the stoic rock, are a potent symbol of rebirth and the cyclical nature of existence. The image may evoke deep-seated feelings of longing and remembrance, engaging viewers on a subconscious level. This interweaving of rock and flower continues to resurface in art across centuries, each time evolving, enriched by new meanings, yet always carrying echoes of its primal origins.

Comments

minneapolisinstituteofart over 1 year ago

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This work showing two rock formations along with the branches of a tree with bright red-orange blossoms was created as a collaboration between Okada Hankō and his father, a notable amateur painter and successful rice merchant (his artist name, Beisanjin, literally means “Rice Mountain Man”). The inscription at far right is by the son, Hankō, who signed the work and provided a date. A smaller inscription in the middle of the work, however, indicates that the more forcefully rendered rock in the middle of the composition was painted by the father. Although this painting takes the distinctive shape of a folding fan, it is missing the telltale accordion-fold creases of a fan previously mounted on bamboo, indicating that it was never actually used as a fan.