Waterfall

Waterfall is a hanging-scroll painting by Mochizuki Gyokusen dated 1910, executed in ink and color on silk and now in the collection of the Honolulu Museum of Art (accession 13912.1). The composition descends vertically from a wooded upper ground through a long cascade to a pool in the foreground, following the late-Edo and Meiji Kyoto convention of treating the waterfall as a single dominant compositional axis with closely observed botanical detail on either side. Painted three years before Gyokusen's death, the scroll is a late expression of his Shijō landscape training, by then enriched by half a century of practice and by his senior position as a Teishitsu Gigeiin and member of the Imperial Household's Art Committee. The handling of the falling water — washes of light ink over a more carefully drawn skeleton of the rock face behind — and the careful observation of the trees framing the cascade reflect the synthesis of literati ink atmosphere and Shijō naturalism that distinguished his mature work. As a documented late painting, the scroll provides an important point of reference for Gyokusen's working practice in the closing years of the Meiji period.