Seirai (Pure Sound)

Kikuchi Keigetsu was one of the most respected Kyoto nihonga artists. Among the many painters who studied under Keigetsu were Horii Kōha and Kajiwara Hisako. Born in Nagano prefecture, Keigetsu moved to Kyoto to pursue painting at the age of seventeen. After a brief study with Utsumi Kichidō, a literati specialist, he became a pupil of Kikuchi Hōbun, an influential master painter, and eventually married his daughter to carry the Kikuchi family name. During his early years, Keigetsu earned many awards and acclaims at local exhibitions in Kyoto for his naturalistic representation of historical themes. After the Bunten government exhibition was instituted in 1907, Keigetsu participated almost annually and achieved great national prominence. From 1918 onwards, he often received the prestigious appointment as a judge for the Bunten and Teiten. Keigetsu’s Taishō-period works display astonishing diversity both in subject and style, varying from a realistic depiction of contemporary life to a rimpa-inspired representation of the fairy-tale world. Today, Keigetsu is best known for his Shōwa-period oeuvre, which features a serene figure style, characterized by polished line and restrained color. During the 1930s and 1940s, he depicted military heroes as well as idealized images of the contemporary woman in the genre of bijinga (paintings of beautiful women). 

Pure Sound represents a Chinese scholar strolling through a pine forest and listening to the sound caused by the wind. He looks slightly upward and has a bamboo staff in his hand. The verticality of the figure and the diagonal thrust of his staff are echoed by the trees in the background. Keigetsu uses smooth, flowing outlines for the figure and carefully renders the texture of the pine bark and details of the foliage. Although the ground plane is not depicted, he creates spatial expression by reducing the size of trees and lightening their tonality successively. The harmonious composition and lyrical naturalism are hallmarks of his early Taishō work. Although the identity of the Chinese figure is not ascertained, his air of nobility leads one to think of Qu Yuan (c. 340-278 BC), a statesman-poet of the Kingdom Chu in the Warring State period. Slandered by corrupt officials and exiled several times, Qu wandered around the countryside and eventually drowned himself out of despair. Considered “the father of Chinese poetry,” Qu has been admired as a literary and political hero in East Asia. In modern Japan, Yokoyama Taikan created a dramatic image of Qu Yuan in a monumental hanging scroll for the first Japan Art Institute exhibition in 1898. 

Keigetsu’s paintings are in the collection of Kyoto Municipal Museum of Art, Osaka City Museum of Fine Arts, The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, The National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto, Adachi Museum of Art, Seattle Art Museum, and other institutions.

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