OKADA BEISANJIN (1744 – 1820)

Still life

Edo period, 18th / 19th century

A Japanese hanging scroll painting, kakejiku, ink on paper, inscribed, signed and sealed

77cm high, 27cm long

Beisanjin came from a family of Osaka rice merchants, his nickname literally translates A mountain of rice. He specialised in the intellectual bunjinga (literati) painting, coming to the scene at the tail end of the movement supported by the aesthetes and intellectuals of that region including Tanomura Chikuden (1777–1835), who wrote of Beisanjin's paintings: they are not what one could call technically accomplished, but he made pictures that are like a sudden revelation of nature's meaning within the heart. His style was simple, almost naive, but forceful at the same time. His works feature in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the British Museum in London.