Recesses of Shiobara (Autumn), panel 4

The fourth and leftmost panel of Recesses of Shiobara closes Yamamoto Shunkyo's 1909 composition by opening the gorge outward into long atmospheric distance. The high horizon line, behind which a layered mass of further mountains recedes into haze, is one of the elements that allies the work with the older monochrome ink landscape tradition of Sesshū and the Muromachi masters as much as with the Maruyama-Shijō shasei tradition Shunkyo had absorbed from Mori Kansai. The autumn palette of red and rust along the lower slopes is balanced by the cooler tonalities of the more distant pines, and the overall composition reads as a single continuous landscape across all four panels — one of Shunkyo's most ambitious essays in the gradual, ambulatory, observed style that he made the defining mode of his career. The screens were exhibited at the third Bunten in 1909, won the top prize, entered the imperial holdings, and were transferred to the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, where they are now classified as an Important Cultural Property.