Rain Strikes the Window, 1729

Details

Gion Nankai (1677-1751)
Rain Strikes the Window, 1729
Signed Nankai Ganyu, sealed Chikkei yoitsu and Gion Jobun, dated 1729 summer
Hanging scroll; ink on paper
46 1/8 x 11 1/8in. (117.3 x 28.3cm.)

Literature

John M. Rosenfield with Fumiko E. Cranston, Extraordinary Persons: Works by Eccentric, Nonconformist Japanese Artists of the Early Modern Era (1580-1868) in the Collection of Kimiko and John Powers, Vol. 2 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Art Museums, 1999), pp. 26-27, no. 111.
John M. Rosenfield and Shujiro Shimada, Traditions of Japanese Art: Selections from the Kimiko and John Powers Collection, (Cambridge, MA.: The Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, 1970), no. 112.

Exhibited

The Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, MA, 1970

Special notice

This lot is offered without reserve.

Lot Essay

Gion Nankai was one of the early pioneers of Japanese literati painting, equally skilled at calligraphy and poetry.

He composed this poem in Chinese:

Jealously rain strikes the window; pistils and stamens wildly fly up.
Hurriedly spring departs; slowly it will return.
Born in this dusty impure world, men grow old –
But I must not despise the things I cannot control.
From a small hermitage deep within a bamboo grove, where I hear only the cry of a bird,
To a solitary village where ferry boats seldom stop,
With my back now bent, to whose house could I go for a drink?
Though I am melancholy and sit in shadow,
I am surrounded by superb paintings.

Translation by Fumiko E. Cranston from Extraordinary Persons, Vol. 2 (1999), p. 26.

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