Splashed-color Landscape

With its brilliant splashes of blue and green mineral pigments (ground azurite and malachite) applied on top of washes of ink that had yet to fully dry, this early landscape demonstrates Araki’s deep assimilation of his mentor, Zhang Daqian’s, splashed-color technique. However, it also represents a departure from Zhang’s painting. Araki’s application of color washes is notably more methodical than that of Zhang, and he includes many more landscape details than Zhang typically did, tendencies that signal a convergence of Araki’s varied artistic interests. Several of the most prominent motifs seen here appear time and again in Araki’s work— distant waterfalls and meandering roads created by leaving parts of the paper surface unmarked, and large, gnarled trees in the foreground.