Taigadō gahō 大雅堂画法
FSC-GR-780.105.1-3
Commentary by Itō Shiori　
Posted May 5, 2017
Original unedited text in Japanese follows

Taigadō gahō (Taigadō painting methods)includes a formal inscription (daiji) by the literati painter, Confucian scholar and friend of Ike Taiga, Kō Fuyō 高芙蓉 (1722–1784), which reads Gajin (画神), or “Painting Deity.” The Confucian scholar Minagawa Kien composed the postscript (dated 1785, Tenmei 5), which stated that this woodblock-printed book was based on an illustrated album that Taiga gave to his wife Ike Gyokuran 池玉瀾 (1727/28–1784) as a model to copy. A section of the original survives and is today housed in the Kyoto Prefectural Collection/Ike Taiga Art Museum. The illustration also introduces work by Gyokuran that corresponds with one section of the original. [1]

It is believed that after Gyokuran’s death, Zeniya Shichirōbē, the head of the publishing firm Unkōdō (芸香堂), acquired the original illustrated album and asked Kien to write the postscript. The Unkōdō had previously published the Heian jinbutsushi (平安人物志), a Who’s Who of Heian (Kyoto) personalities in the Edo period, from 1768 (Meiwa 5) to 1782 (Tenmei 2). It also issued a considerable number of noh music texts. However, this printing was not produced by the Unkōdō since at the time of publication the block-holder was Shinshōsai, the literati painter Nakae Tochō 中江杜徴 (1748–1816). It was sold with a wrapper illustrated with chrysanthemums by Gyokuran.

The three-volume Taigadō gahō contains seventy-six illustrations, with two printed in color in volume 1 and one in volume 2. Even though the work is principally printed in gray tones with black sumi ink, several woodblocks have been employed to convey a tonal range, and they express well Taiga’s carefree use of line. Taigadō gahō draws on the distinctive style of the seventeenth-century Chinese painting manual Jiezhiyuan hua zhuan 芥子園畫傳 (J. Kaishien gadan; The mustard seed garden manual of painting) and in the choice of subjects from the tenth-century Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period to the Yuan dynasty (1271–1368). However, these are all rendered in a Taiga style in its use of long brushstrokes.

Although this volume was published in Bunka 1(1804), some twenty years after Taiga’s death, it was most likely produced to meet the demand from literati (nanga or bunjinga) painters for manuals. In addition to the 1804 printing, there was also a printing from 1835 (Tenpō 6) that was from re-cut blocks. The Pulverer Taigadō gahō is a beautiful early work that was printed at around the same time as a copy in the Chiba City Museum of Art. A Meiji-era printing, which compiled images from the second and third volumes, was released in 1880 (see Taigadō gaho; FSC-GR-780.104).

書名　大雅堂画法
執筆者伊藤紫織

高芙蓉の題字「画神」、皆川淇園の跋文を伴う。天明5年（1785）の年記のある淇園の跋文によれば、原本は大雅が妻玉瀾（1728～84）の手本として与えた画巻で、原本の一部が京都府蔵池大雅美術館コレクションとして現存する。図様が一部一致する玉瀾の作品も紹介されている。玉瀾没後に芸香堂主人が購入して淇園に跋を求めたものという。芸香堂銭屋七郎兵衛は『平安人物志』の明和5年版から天明2年版の版元で、謡曲音曲の出版が多い書店であるが、その芸香堂からは出版されず、刊行時の蔵版者真賞斎は中江杜徴である。玉瀾の菊の図がついた袋に入れて売られた。

３冊に計76図が描かれ、そのうちの三図が色刷りである。それ以外の墨刷りの図でも墨色を変えた数種類の板を用い、大雅ののびやかな線がよく表現されている。五代～元の中国の画人が得意とした画題、特徴的な描法を『芥子園画伝』等の中国の版本から取り入れ、大雅風に整理している。本書が刊行された文化元年は大雅の没後20年を経ているが、当時盛んに行われた文人画の絵手本需要をあてこんで出版されたのだろう。

Selected readings:
Felice Fischer with Kyoko Kinoshita, Ike Taiga and Tokuyama Gyokuran: Japanese Masters of the Brush (Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2007), 440.

Jack Hillier, The Art of the Japanese Book, 2 vols. (London: Sotheby’s Publications by Philip Wilson Publishers Ltd., 1987), esp. vol. 2, 627–28.

Roger S. Keyes, Ehon: The Artist and the Book in Japan (New York: New York Public Library; Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2006), 280.

C. H. Mitchell, with the assistance of Osamu Ueda, The Illustrated Books of the Nanga, Maruyama, Shijo and Other Related Schools of Japan. A Biobibliography (Los Angeles: Dawson’s Book Shop, 1972), 510.　

The Museum of Kyoto京都文化博物館, ed., Ike no Taiga ten: bunjinga no kyoshō 『池大雅展文人画の巨匠』(Kyoto: The Museum of Kyoto, 1996).　

Nakano Mitsutoshi 中野三敏 and Kikutake Jun’ichi 菊竹淳一, eds., Taiga no gafu「大雅の画譜」, vol. 2 (1986), Aimi Kōu shū『相見香雨集』, Nihon shoshigaku taikei 45『日本書誌学大系45』, 5 vols. (Musashimurayama-shi: Seishōdō, 1985–1998), 206–12.

Weidner, Marsha Smith, ed., Flowering in the Shadows: Women in the History of Chinese and Japanese Painting (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1990), 257.

Copies in other collections:
Bunka 1 (1804) printing:
Chiba City Museum of Art
Kyoto University Library
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
New York Public Library
Niigata University
Tokyo University of the Arts, University Library

Tenpō 6 (1835) printing:
Kanazawa College of Art Library
Nagoya City Museum
Nishio City Iwase Bunko
Seikadō Bunko Art Museum, Tokyo
Tokyo Research Institute for Cultural Properties
Tokyo University

[1] Gyokuran’s work, thought to be based on the original painting album Taigadō, was earlier displayed in an exhibition and subsequently illustrated in a printed publication.