Magnolia Tree

Magnolia Tree (Mokuren, 1919) is one of the works that marks Kokei's mid-Taishō shift from historical figures toward the slow, deliberate observation of plants and flowers that would carry his late career. The hanging scroll shows a single mokuren (Magnolia liliflora) in flower against an empty silk ground, the dark grey-purple of the unopened buds set off by the pale pink and ivory of the opened blossoms and by the elegant black line of the unleafed branch. The composition is austere: the tree is given no setting, no garden context, no horizon, and the upper third of the scroll is occupied entirely by silk left untouched. The drawing of the flowers is performed in Kokei's characteristic even-pressure line, with the slight irregularities of the petal edges supplied by colour rather than contour. The work belongs today to the Adachi Museum of Art and is generally taken as the moment at which Kokei's mature kachō manner — quiet, slightly chilly, exquisitely placed — first comes into focus.