Landscape with Pines

Yamamoto Baiitsu is best known as a painter of birds and flowers. This painting, however, attests to the fact that he was also a skillful landscape artist, fully aware of Chinese painting styles. The dry, block-shaped rocks of the distant mountains, for example, recall the work of China's fourteenth century painter Ni Tsan, while the dramatic pine tree in the foreground is a feature associated with the seventh century artist Hung Jen. The delicacy and lightness of this work, however, resulting from a profusion of feathery brushstrokes and subtle tints of color, reflects Baiitsu own artistic sensibility.