‘Horse Market in Mountain Village’ is a fairly close copy by Hirai Kensai (1802–1856) of a painting with the same title by Ike Taiga (1723–76) (fig. 1). Taiga’s work is smaller, measuring 45.2 x 19.3 cm., which seems to increase the visual density of his work, and Kensai’s brushwork is looser, more fluid, which yields a more relaxed expression. Both paintings exemplify the Japanese genius for painting crowds, capturing the tension and excitement of the herd of horses as they are crowded together by means of essential detail—what the eye would actually record rather than what the mind knows to be present.
Hirai Kensai was the son of Hirai Jiroku, a wealthy farmer in what is now Shizuoka prefecture. Beginning his study of calligraphy with his father, Kensai studied painting from 1813 onward with Muramatsu Iko, a painter-in-attendance of the Kakegawa Clan. His fellow pupil at that time was Fukuda Hanko (1804–64), and the two artists maintained a close relationship in later years. In 1815 Kensai’s father died and was succeeded by Kensai’s elder brother; when the brother passed away in 1825, Kensai became head of the family and married Tomi, daughter of a samurai of the Tanaka clan.
In 1827 Kensai travelled to Edo, determined to become an artist. Studying first with Tani Buncho (1763–1840), Kensai then travelled for four years before he was called home by his mother. An older pupil of Buncho, Takaku Aigai (1796–1843), also influenced Kensai’s style of landscape painting. On a second trip to Edo, in 1835, Kensai met and became a pupil of Watanabe Kazan (1793–1841), who in 1838, during Kensai’s third visit to Edo, gave him the studio name ‘Tower of painting mountains and drawing water.’ When Kazan was arrested later that year, Hanko, Chinzan, and Kensai tried to assist their friend and mentor but to no avail; Kazan committed suicide in 1841 while under house arrest.
Fig. 1. Ike Taiga: “Horse Market in Mountain Village,” 1755, after Ike Taiga Nihon Bijutsu Kaiga Zenshu, Tokyo, 1980, vol. 18, pl. 64.
Details:
Box details:
Outer (sleeve) box cover end inscription:
“Hirai Kensai copying Ike Taiga’s ‘Mountain Village
Horse Market Painting'”
Wooden box top inscription:
平井三谷翁真蹟淡彩山邨馬市之図 紙本
“A genuine work by Old Hirai Sankoku, a lightly colored ‘Horse Market in Mountain Village.’ On paper.”
On reverse of painting:
“‘Horse Market’ by Sankoku requested by Takemoto Masaaki. Owned by Takemoto Genki, owned by Yamamoto Sozu, bought in Showa 16 (1941).”
Box inscription:
“A genuine work by Old Hirai Sankoku, a lightly colored ‘Horse Market in Mountain Village.’ Probably painted by the old master during his late years, perhaps during the first year of the Ansei era (1854); this is an excellent work done after Ike Taiga. Certified and written by his great grandson, Jiroku, on the day of the One-hundred Fiftieth Memorial Exhibition of his birth, Showa 26 (1951).”
Wooden box end label:
三谷 馬市 初秋
“Sankoku Horse Market Early Autumn”
(meaning it’s appropriate for this scroll to be hung in the early autumn.)