Omi Gyokurin, Yano Tessan, and Anonymous Japanese Literati Paintings, 18th-19th Centuries.
Bamboo in Snow
Omi Gyokurin (1751–1814)
Hanging Scroll, Ink on paper
This hanging scroll by the Buddhist priest and painter Omi Gyokurin depicts bamboo bending beneath the weight of newly fallen snow. Several dark stalks rise and cross through the narrow composition, while clusters of ink-black leaves emerge from masses of untouched paper. The painting is archaic, weighty, and austere, yet its apparent simplicity conceals an exceptionally sophisticated understanding of ink, paper, and emptiness.
The snow has not been added with white pigment. Instead, Gyokurin brushed ink washes across the surrounding paper while carefully preserving pale borders around the bamboo leaves and stalks. These unpainted areas become accumulated snow. What the viewer perceives as white is therefore the original paper itself, made visible through the ink that surrounds it.
This method exemplifies a fundamental principle of East Asian literati painting: an object need not be directly painted in order to be fully present. Snow is revealed through absence. The brush describes the atmosphere around it, and the untouched paper completes the image. Emptiness is not a void but an active pictorial substance.
The contrast between bamboo and snow is forceful. The stalks are rendered with heavy, blunt strokes that possess an almost epigraphic quality, recalling characters carved into bronze or stone. Knuckles interrupt the stalks with angular pressure, while the leaves gather into dense, irregular masses of black. Against these weighty forms, the reserved snow appears luminous and silent.
The composition is deliberately unstable. One bamboo stalk rises vertically along the left side, while another cuts diagonally across the lower half of the painting. Their opposing directions suggest that the plants are bending under snow and winter wind. Yet the bamboo does not break. Its endurance gives the image a moral dimension long associated with bamboo in Chinese and Japanese literati culture.
Gyokurin’s brushwork is neither polished nor decorative. Its rough edges, compressed leaf clusters, uneven washes, and blunt changes of direction create an archaic gravity. This cultivated awkwardness gives the painting its Zen character. Nothing is refined merely for visual pleasure; every stroke is direct, necessary, and grounded in the physical movement of the brush.
The broad field of brown-gray wash also creates an enveloping winter atmosphere. It eliminates any conventional distinction between earth and sky, near and far. The bamboo appears suspended within snow, mist, and cold air. The surrounding world has been reduced to ink, paper, and silence.
Omi Gyokurin was a Buddhist priest and bunjinga painter who specialized in ink paintings of bamboo. He studied under the priest-painter Gyokuo (dates unknown). The concentrated subject, calligraphic brushwork, and rejection of descriptive excess place the present work firmly within the East Asian literati tradition.¹
Within Time Well Wasted, Bamboo in Snow demonstrates how ink painting creates an entire world through extreme economy. Snow is not painted, yet it covers every branch. Cold is not described, yet it is felt throughout the image. The work asks the viewer to recognize what has been left untouched and to discover presence within emptiness—the quiet visual intelligence at the heart of East Asian ink art.
Signed “Freely painted by Omi Gyokurin” (淡海玉潾寫意), with two seals.
Image: 51 5/8 × 20 5/8 inches (131.1 × 52.4 cm).
Scroll: 76 × 26 1/2 inches (193 × 67.3 cm).
Reference
- British Museum. “Omi Gyokurin 淡海玉潾.”
Autumn Landscape with a Traveler
Yano Tessan (1894–1975)
Hanging Scroll, Ink and Color on Paper
This hanging scroll by Yano Tessan depicts a solitary traveler moving through an autumn mountain landscape. A towering rock formation rises at lower right, while a second cliff, covered with red foliage, advances from the left. Between them, the tiny figure passes through a narrow opening before an immense expanse of untouched paper.
The work is an outstanding modern expression of East Asian literati painting. It is not constructed through laborious description or repeated layers of color. Mountains, trees, branches, and the human figure appear to have been written into existence with a single calligraphic brush. Painting and calligraphy share the same movement, pressure, rhythm, and breath.
The rock formations are especially remarkable. Broad strokes begin with saturated ink, spread into soft gray, and finally dissolve into dry, broken traces. Dark, light, wet, and dry effects coexist within a single movement of the brush. These tonal transformations do not merely describe the surfaces of the mountains; they create their weight, moisture, atmosphere, and distance.
Water is as important as ink. Tessan allows moisture to carry pigment outward, softening the edges of the cliffs and dissolving their lower portions into mist. Elsewhere, the relatively dry brush catches against the paper, leaving rough textures that suggest weathered stone. The landscape emerges from the changing relationship between water, ink, brush, and paper.
The autumn foliage is reduced to brief touches of pale red. These accents are neither individually outlined leaves nor decorative additions. They function like colored punctuation within the larger rhythm of the ink, warming the otherwise austere landscape and directing the viewer toward the traveler at its center.
The figure is rendered with only a few strokes. A dark hat, reddish face, simple robe, and two vertical bundles are sufficient to establish a human presence. Against the immense cliffs and unpainted sky, the traveler appears fragile, yet entirely integrated into the landscape. Human life becomes a brief movement within the greater stillness of nature.
The upper half of the composition is almost completely empty. This emptiness is not unfinished space. It becomes mist, sky, distance, and silence. By placing the entire pictorial event near the bottom of the long scroll, Tessan slows the viewer’s descent toward the landscape and creates a powerful sense of isolation and contemplation.
Yano Tessan, whose personal name was Tamio, was born in Imabari, Ehime Prefecture, in 1894. At the age of eighteen, he moved to Tokyo and studied under the prominent nanga painter Komuro Suiun (1874–1945). He later settled in Osaka and became an important figure in the development of modern Japanese ink painting. His works received recognition at the Teiten and Bunten exhibitions, and in 1968 he established the All Japan Ink Painting Association. In 1971, he received the Medal with Purple Ribbon for his contribution to the advancement of contemporary ink painting.¹
Tessan’s achievement was not simply to preserve an older style. He carried the literati principle of “writing the painting” into modern Japan. In the present work, the mountain is a large calligraphic structure, the trees are written like cursive characters, and the traveler is compressed into a few essential marks. Everything is created through the expressive behavior of the brush.
Within Time Well Wasted, this painting demonstrates the inseparability of calligraphy and painting. A single stroke may become rock, mist, branch, shadow, and atmosphere as its moisture and pressure change. The landscape is not assembled from separate objects; it unfolds as one continuous act of writing. This is East Asian literati ink painting at its most refined: an entire world brought into being by one brush, water, ink, and time.
Signed “Tessan Gaishi” (鐵山外史). The seals read “Tessanjin” (鐵山人) and “Fumai” (不昧).
Image: 46 1/2 × 7 1/4 inches (118.1 × 18.4 cm).
Scroll: 72 × 10 1/4 inches (182.9 × 26 cm).
Reference
- Tokyo National Research Institute for Cultural Properties. “Yano Tessan.” Year Book of Japanese Art, 1976, 295.
Peony and Bees
Anonymous
Hanging Scroll, Ink and Color on Silk
This elegant hanging scroll depicts a large pink peony blooming near the lower edge of an otherwise spacious field, while two bees hover high above it. Although executed in color, the painting may be understood as an extension of the East Asian ink tradition. Its essential language remains that of the brush: every petal, leaf, stem, and insect is shaped through variations of pressure, speed, moisture, and density.
The peony is built from broad, translucent washes of white, pale pink, and deeper red. Color gathers toward the center of the blossom and gradually dissolves across the outer petals, allowing the flower to appear full and luminous without becoming heavy. The transitions were achieved not through rigid outlines but through the controlled movement of water. Pigment spreads, overlaps, and fades much as ink would in a monochrome painting.
The leaves are treated more directly. Broad green strokes establish their forms, while darker lines articulate the veins. Their irregular contours retain the trace of the moving brush, giving the foliage a free and spontaneous character. The painting therefore balances two different uses of water: soft diffusion in the flower and firmer, more calligraphic articulation in the leaves.
The two bees are described with remarkable economy. Each is formed from only a few delicate strokes and touches of pale color, yet their suspended bodies immediately animate the otherwise empty upper field. The large interval separating the insects from the peony is essential to the composition. Rather than serving as an unoccupied background, the open silk becomes the distance through which the bees travel and the still air in which their movement can be imagined.
This work demonstrates that ink painting is not defined solely by the use of black ink. Its deeper principles lie in the living movement of the brush, the transformation of pigment by water, the rhythm between painted and unpainted areas, and the ability of emptiness to evoke atmosphere and time. Color expands this language without changing its foundation.
Within Time Well Wasted, Peony and Bees transforms an almost imperceptible moment into an invitation to sustained attention. A peony opens; two bees cross the stillness toward it; nothing more is required. The immense quiet surrounding these small forms slows the eye and enlarges the instant, until an ordinary encounter becomes a complete and self-contained world. To follow the bees across the empty silk is to leave measured time behind and enter the gentler duration of contemplation. Such time is not wasted: it is time recovered—returned to wonder, presence, and the quiet act of seeing.
Bearing an unidentified signature and seal at the lower right.
Image: 35 3/4 × 10 5/8 inches (90.8 × 27 cm).
Scroll: 69 1/2 × 12 1/8 inches (176.5 × 30.8 cm).
These works are featured in the special exhibition Time Well Wasted: Five Hundred Years of Japanese Ink Painting, held at Michaan’s Auctions from August 16 to 21, 2026, and are illustrated on page 95-105 of the accompanying book by Jingwei Zeng.
For condition report and additional photos, please contact the Asian Art Department.
