Tanomura Chokunyū (1814–1907) 
Pavilions 
Japan, dated 1905 
Album; ink and color on silk 
Gift of Terry Welch, 2021 (2021-03-123) 

Chokunyū made this album when he was 91, only two years before he passed away. A comparison with other mature works such as Great View of Mountain and River (1896) or Ink Landscape (1880), also in this exhibition, shows that his brushwork had lost none of its strength. Chokunyū had a deep awareness of historical references and included many in his paintings, such as an empty pavilion that is closely associated with the Chinese master Ni Zan (1301–1374), a friend of Wang Meng—whose style Chokunyū emulated in Landscape in the Style of Wang Meng in this exhibition—and like him, an important early model of the literati tradition. 
 
Ni Zan lived at a time when China had been invaded by the Mongols, and his pavilions devoid of human presence in oppressive landscapes were laden with political significance. As in the case of Landscape in the Style of Wang Meng, here Chokunyū—who never had access to an original work by Ni Zan—transformed the subject for his own expressive purposes, depicting pavilions in various settings and stylistic contexts that offer a more expansive aesthetic vision.