Recesses of Shiobara (Autumn), panel 2

The second panel of Yamamoto Shunkyo's 1909 Recesses of Shiobara carries the composition downward and inward into the gorge, with the rocky bed of the Shiobara river and the autumn-tinted slopes climbing on either side. The Shijō school's interest in observed botanical and geological structure is everywhere in the handling: individual maple leaves are drawn with the kind of accuracy that comes from sustained outdoor sketching, and the gradation of color from the red of the foreground maples to the cool greys of the distant rock is built through layered washes rather than through the more saturated, evenly distributed palette of decorative Edo screens. Shunkyo's debt to his teachers Mori Kansai and Kōno Bairei is most visible here in the disciplined drawing of the foliage; his own contribution is in the way the middle distance opens out, building a sense of walked space that a viewer can move through rather than a flat field of pattern. The screens entered the imperial holdings after the 1909 Bunten and are now held by the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, where they have been recognized as an Important Cultural Property within the modern Japanese painting canon.