Tani Buncho painted mountains in the literati manner, where a landscape is not a view but an idea of one, and Mountainscape is drawn in acknowledgement of that tradition. The road between Kyoto and Tokyo supplies the material, peaks and water and cultivated gardens, but the handling is what matters. Distance is given by tone rather than by perspective, so the far ranges pale and the near ones hold their weight.
It is hand-painted throughout, and the brushwork rewards close reading. A ridge line is a single stroke; water is a series of parallel marks with the paper left showing between them; the gardens are indicated rather than described. The eye moves through the design the way it would move through a real landscape, resting at a peak, following a watercourse, finding something it had not seen before.
The scale is generous: a 100 cm repeat on a wide 0.7 m roll, hung half drop so the peaks stagger between drops and no ridge line runs the full height of a wall. It needs room to be read properly, so it is better across a whole wall or a whole room than confined to a panel, and it sits well with quiet furniture and plain floors.
