Male and female peacocks pose on a garden rock surrounded by gorgeous peony blossoms while a mountain cherry tree, azalea, and white magnolia provide further spectacle above as well as perches for additional auspicious birds. The connotations of the peacock—beauty and high rank—are well-matched here with the peony, the Queen of Flowers in China and symbolic of honor and riches, a wide range of meaning that is augmented in the title written by the artist mentioning the Jade Hall of longevity.
Taki Ken, azana Shichoku, called Randen (“Orchid Field”) and Katei (“Peaceful Pavilion”), was born in Sendagaya, Edo, in 1830, the son of an unattached samurai from Hiroshima. Displaying early on a love of painting, Katei—then called Suizan (“Verdant Peak”) and later Kankai (“Broad Sea”)—became a disciple of Ōoka Umpō (1765-1848), a pupil in Edo of the seal-carver Fuyō and an admirer of Ike Taiga (1723-1776; see cat. 38-39). During these formative years Katei also studied classical Chinese literature with Sakamoto Konen and calligraphy with Taguchi Koson.
In 1850, after the death of Umpō, Katei traveled through Sanuki, Matsuyama, Shimonoseki and Kokura to arrive eventually at Nagasaki, where he became a pupil at the Shuntoku-ji residence of the Zen monk Tetsuō (1791-1871), one of the three great Nanga masters in Nagasaki at that time. In Nagasaki Katei became familiar with various styles of Chinese painting, including the flower-and-bird manner of the great Chinese master Yün Shou-p’ing (1633-1690), and was able to learn directly from Chinese artists then active in Nagasaki such as Ch’en I-hsi (1783-1856) and Hua K’un-tien. After about six months of study Katei left Nagasaki and, on the trip home to Edo, visited and discussed painting with such masters of the Nanga school as Nukina Kaioku (1778-1863), Yamamoto Baiitsu (1783-1856), Yanagawa Seigan (1789-1858), Maeda Yōdō, Oda Kaisen (1785-1862), Nakabayashi Chikutō (1776-1853), and Tsubaki Chinzan (1801-54). Katei’s travels—which included visits to Aizu, Hokuetsu, and Echigo—continued for almost twenty years from the time he first left Edo to visit Nagasaki. In 1863 he had bought his first house in Edo but in 1867, with the city in turmoil attendant on the restoration of imperial rule, he moved for a time to Kazusa. Two years later, in 1869 at age thirty-nine, he married the daughter of the calligrapher Takahashi Sekisai and moved to Fukagawa. Evidence for Katei’s growing reputation and importance in art-circles comes from his appointment late that same year, 1869, to an administrative position in the Imperial Household. In 1873 his paintings were shown at the Vienna Exposition of that year.
When sections of the Imperial Palace were rebuilt in 1886, a total of forty artists were selected from among seventy recommended from various schools throughout Japan. Katei was listed first among the twenty-two painters working in Chinese painting styles. His flower-and-bird paintings executed on the cedar doors and ceiling of the Residential Hall in the palace demonstrate his mastery of the style of Yün Shou-p’ing. The present painting, executed fairly soon after the imperial commission, exemplifies in its strong composition and disciplined brushwork the effect of Katei’s assiduous study of Chinese originals.
In later years Katei served as a judge for various painting competitions, and in 1893 he was appointed to the Art Committee of the Imperial Household. His influence was extended even further via his publications, such as the Kokokan Gashū (1880), which includes his earlier designs for landscape, figure, and flower-and-bird paintings, and the Kachō Gafu (1887), “Compendium of Flower-and-bird Paintings.” Laurance Roberts has identified a primary reason why the manifold talents of Katei have not received due recognition in modern times: “(Katei is) much neglected as a result of the disturbances surrounding the Restoration (of imperial rule in 1868). (He was) an admirable painter of kachōga…”¹ Following an illness, Taki Katei died in Kamakura in the year 1901.
1. Laurance Roberts: A Dictionary of Japanese Artists (Tokyo, 1976) p.171.
Details:
Outer box lid & close up:
Inner box lid inscription & close up:
