Two Views of Mount Fuji

Two Views of Mount Fuji is a hanging-scroll painting by Tomioka Tessai in ink and color on silk, signed Tessai with the artist's standard late seals, and now held by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (accession 11.7424). The work pairs two contrasting views of Mount Fuji — Japan's pre-eminent classical motif and a subject treated by countless painters from the Tosa and Kanō schools through Hokusai and Hiroshige into the Meiji and Taishō periods — in a single composition, exploiting the bunjin (literati) habit of juxtaposing related views as a meditation on time, weather, and the painter's perception. Tessai's handling of Fuji exemplifies his characteristic style: rough, broken brushwork building the volume of the mountain, energetic black ink describing the foreground rocks and trees, and a controlled use of mineral colors to focus the eye on key passages of the picture. The painting carries a lengthy inscription in classical Chinese, integrating the image with the verbal tradition of Fuji as a sacred mountain. The work entered the Museum of Fine Arts in 1911 through the William Sturgis Bigelow bequest, part of the foundation of Boston's holdings of late Meiji and Taishō Japanese painting.