Landscape

This wide-format hanging scroll depicts a foreground spit of land in monochrome with trees and rocks projecting diagonally from middle right to lower left. A barely discernible far shore in pale gray washes appears from the middle left to middle right. Hine Taizan, a masterful painter with an eccentric personality, was among the most important Japanese literati artists of the 19th century. Taizan’s inscription is written in columns from right to left, as is typical in East Asian writing, across the top of the composition. It includes a poem composed by the 14th-century Chinese scholar and painter Chen Ruyan (c.1331–before 1371), who had originally inscribed this poem on a landscape painting depicting spring mountains.