Ōno Bakufū (1890–1976)
Fishing in a Mountain Stream
Japan, c. 1926–1976
Hanging scroll; ink and color on silk
Gift of Terry Welch, 2021 (2021-03-113)
Bakufū follows the basic structure of East Asian landscape painting, with a fisherman crouching by a stream in the foreground, a valley with a waterfall in the midground, and distant peaks in the background. However, a comparison with works more grounded in tradition such as Tanomura Chokunyū’s Ink Landscape reveals dramatic differences. The multiple perspectives and narrative devices such as paths and pavilions used to guide the viewer through the composition have been eliminated to present a singularly unified scene. Even more noticeably, Bakufū abandons the expressive brushwork that is fundamental to traditional landscapes and replaces it with impressionistic washes used to emphasize fields of color.
Bakufū first trained in Western oil painting and was a member of the White Horse Society, the most influential group advocating for Western-style painting at the beginning of the 20th century. When he shifted to Japanese-style painting and printmaking, he brought a new aesthetic influenced by his early background. At the same time, Bakufū was part of a larger trend by many of the artists in this exhibition to modernize the brushwork and sense of color in Japanese-style painting that drove innovations in the 1920s.