White Clouds and Trees in Autumn

White Clouds and Trees in Autumn (Bāmu im Herbst, c. 1914) is a hanging-scroll painting by Tsuji Kakō in ink and color, depicting an autumnal landscape of trees in their turning colors set against atmospheric cloud and distant mountain. The composition belongs to the late-Meiji and Taishō nihonga landscape tradition that combined the atmospheric inheritance of Maruyama landscape painting with new attention to weather effects and seasonal light, partly under the indirect influence of contemporary Japanese-style adaptations of Western plein-air painting. Kakō's drawing of the bark, branching, and leaf-clusters reflects the shasei discipline he had absorbed from his teacher Kōno Bairei, applied to the standard autumn motifs (maple in red and gold, dried grasses, scattered berries) of the seasonal painting tradition. The atmospheric handling of cloud across the upper register — the white clouds that give the work its title — is characteristic of his interest in moisture, light, and air as legitimate subjects of landscape painting beyond the figural motif. The work is among the more frequently reproduced of his single-scroll landscapes and is documented across German and Japanese Wikipedia's articles on the painter.