Nakatsuka Issan 中塚一杉 (b. 1892)

Morning Quiet あさしづ

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Two-panel folding screen
Ink, colors and gofun on silk

Signature: Issan ga 一杉画 »Painted by Issan«
Seal: Nakatsuka 中塚

Exhibited: The 8th Teiten National Exhibition, 1927
Published: Nittenshi 日展史, vol 8, p. 117, nr. 181.

The artist Issan presents us with an intimate scene of a small vegetable garden in the early morning quiet. It is early morning in summer, the lower part of the painting still dark and soft light and blue sky starting to appear above.

We see a number of plants and vegetables in a composition of compressed rows. In the front are flowering garden balsam (Hōsenka 鳳仙花) and three pepper plants (Shishitōgarashi 獅子唐辛子). In the next row are four eggplants (Nasu 茄子), followed by a row of cucumber plants (Kyūri 胡瓜). In the far background are the ink outlines of young bamboo plants. The various plants with their different colors, leaves, fruits and flowers interweave on the painting surface, creating a densely interrelated idyllic vision. A hint of humor can be seen with the patch of weeds in the front right and with the morning glory on the far right which comes out to greet the artist’s signature.

Looking closer, one notices four insects hidden among the leaves: a praying mantis, a dragonfly and two grasshoppers. The artist also chose to show natural decay in the work: many leaves are insect-bitten, and a fallen-down cucumber and several leaves are in various stages of decomposition. This undertone of decay and death is contrasted by the vitality of the strong colors of eggplants and their leaves.

Issan uses special effects, such as gofun, a white powder made from sea shells, which he applied below the paint on the cucumbers to give them moriage three-dimensional effects. Throughout the painting, the line is always under control; the dragonfly balanced on the cucumber leaf, for example, is drawn in a poetry of ink lines.

The work is a remarkable achievement for the young artist and was the first of his to be accepted for a national exhibition, the 8th Teiten Exhibition in Shōwa 2 1927, shown under the title あさしづ or Morning Quiet and illustrated in the accompanying catalog.1 Born in 1892, Issan studied under two giants in the Kyoto art world of the time: Takeuchi Seihō 竹内栖鳳 (1864 –1942) and Nishimura Goun 西村五雲 (1877 –1938).2 After his apprenticeship, he settled in the Shimogamo area of Kyoto and exhibited at a number of prestigious national exhibitions: he entered works in five Teiten exhibitions, three Shin-Bunten exhibitions, one Nitten exhibition, among others.3 The last trace we have of the painter is his entry in the ninth Nitten exhibition of 1953.

Interestingly, Issan must have been fond of the vegetable garden theme, as he returned to it ten years later in a work labeled »Vegetable Garden in Early Autumn« 菜園初秋 for his entry into the first Shin-Bunten exhibition of 1937. The famous cultural figure Oguma Hideo 小熊秀雄 (1901– 40) saw this work at the exhibition and wrote the following praise about Issan’s screen:4 »An outstanding characteristic of present-day Nihonga painting is the ability to draw an inherently complex image of a vegetable garden clearly without any confusion.« The skill that was apparent in Issan’s later work of 1937 is certainly also clear in this superb screen that Issan painted ten years earlier.

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