Landscape in the Manner of Dong Yuan

Nanga artists were painters who admired Chinese literati paintings and studied them through both printed painting manuals and imported artworks, as they were prohibited from traveling to China. Nakabayashi Chikutō was a fourth generation nanga artist. He had many opportunities to study and copy Chinese painting at first hand through his connections to Kamiya Ten’yū (1710-1801), a wealthy merchant and collector of antique Japanese and Chinese painting. Chikutō’s studies allowed his own paintings to approach the original style of the Chinese masters like Dong Yuan (932-962). In this painting, Chikutō takes on the classic motif of a scholar walking in nature followed by his attendant. Chikutō seems to suggest that the scholar is on the way to the little hut that is high up in the mountains, an ideal place to contemplate and enjoy the waterfall.