(From Field Museum of Natural History Bulletin, June 1988, "Traditions in Japanese Art: The Boone Collection", by Suzanne Arata and Carolyn Moore with modifications by Field Museum staff, p.7)
Returning from a Spring Outing
By Oda Kaisen (1785-1862)
Edo period, 18th -19th century
Ink and color on silk
62 x 144 cm
Cat. 266019
© The Field Museum
Landscapes depicting a scholar's house in a valley by a stream, with the owner and his two servants returning home after a day's journey, are typical of those found in Chinese Ming Dynasty paintings ( A.D. 1368-1644). The old trees with exposed claw-like roots and the waterfall and rock formation in the center of the painting are reminiscent of earlier Chinese landscape traditions. However, rather than a harsh, forbidding mood always seen in Chinese paintings, this painting has a light, airy quality. The soft, warm coloring and washes give the painting a clarity, appeal, and accessibility. Perhaps this is attributable to Kaisen's sensitivity to color developed through his early training as a dyer.
Oda Kaisen was born into a family of dyers in Nagato (present-day Yamaguchi prefecture) and at the age of 22 moved to Kyoto. There he studied painting of the Shijo school, where realism was combined with the idealism of Nanga ("southern painting"). Nanga was practiced by the Japanese literati, who followed the lead of the Chinese scholar painters without being totally bound by Chinese traditional rules or methods. Later, Kaisen went to Kyushu, where he studied Confucianism and Chinese painting, specializing in landscape, figure, and bird and flower subjects and was recognized as an expert colorist.