Landscape

松巌書屋図
松巖書屋圖
松严书屋图
송암서옥도

A huge pine tree spreads its branches along a large rock. Further beyond, behind a thick growth of bamboo, a noble person is reading in a modest house. At the front of the rock, a man and his attendant are walking towards the house. The stream flowing around the right-hand side of the rock leads our eyes towards the depths. The rugged mountains in the distance seem to imply the severity of living there and reaching the recesses.

There are three ways of depicting landscapes in traditional Chinese and Japanese representation of far and near. In this painting, the mountains in the distance are represented with height. The stream, path, pine, and study are portrayed with depth. The noble person living in seclusion in the mountains is an ideal subject in literati painting and was often depicted in both China and Japan. This is a work typical of Aigai, who studied not only Japanese but also Chinese literati painting hard.