“Mount Fuji Seen from Mount Higaneyama”

Sō Shiseki

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Artist Name
Sō Shiseki
Title
“Mount Fuji Seen from Mount Higaneyama”
Dimensions
painting：46.1×99.1cm
full length：151.2×134.0cm
Medium
ink with colors on silk
Description
Mount Higaneyama extends southward from the outer rim of the Hakone mountains. Since ancient times, it has been revered as a sacred site and was known as a spiritual mountain where the souls of the dead were believed to gather.

With the development of travel culture in the late Edo period, it also became renowned as an excellent vantage point from which one could survey the scenic beauty of “Ten Provinces and Five Islands.” The panoramic view from Mount Higaneyama was depicted in numerous paintings, and artists such as Katsushika Hokusai and Ōoka Unpō also portrayed its celebrated scenery. A comparable work by Sō Shiseki is preserved in the collection of the Tokyo National Museum.

Sō Shiseki (1715–1786) was born in Edo and was an active painter of the mid-Edo period. Little is known about his early life. In his mid-forties, during the Hōreki era, he traveled to Nagasaki, where he studied the Nanpin style under Kumashiro Yūhi (also known as Xiong Dai), who had learned the techniques of the Chinese painter Shen Nanpin. He subsequently apprenticed himself to the visiting Qing painter Song Ziyan. Adopting a Chinese-style name derived from that of his teacher, he called himself Sō Shiseki.

Renowned for his realistic bird-and-flower paintings, Sō Shiseki, together with Kakutei, is regarded as one of the leading representatives of the Nanpin school in Japan.

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