Quietness (Seishuku)

Quietness (Seishuku, 静寂) is a 1932 hanging scroll also in the Adachi Museum of Art collection, scanned at high resolution (2737 by 2393 pixels) for the Google Art Project. The composition shows a kingfisher perched above a still pool, its bright blue plumage rendered against the muted greys and browns of the rocky pondside, with a basket of arranged greens at one edge of the scene. The painting belongs to the still-life-and-bird (kachō-seizu) tradition that Goun's teacher Takeuchi Seihō had also pursued, here treated with the kind of quietly observational composition that the Maruyama-Shijō tradition prized. The kingfisher (kawasemi) is a recurring Kyoto-school subject, prized for the iridescent blue back that gives the bird its informal Japanese name 'flying jewel' (tobu hōseki); Goun's handling stays close to direct observation while admitting the calligraphic line work he had absorbed across his careers in the Kishi and Takeuchi studios. The painting was completed in the year Goun was promoted to membership of the Imperial Art Academy (Teikoku Bijutsuin) following Yamamoto Shunkyo's death, and represents the mature middle of his late style. The Adachi Museum, which houses one of Japan's most celebrated modernist garden landscapes alongside its painting collection, displays the work as a high point of Goun's interwar production. The title Seishuku (silence, quietness) is consistent with the meditative naming conventions of his late maturity.