KAMEDA, Bosai.

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

Kyochuzan ("Mountains of the Heart"). First edition, later printing. This compendium of landscapes in the Chinese style, featuring mountains, dripping waterfalls, reclusive poets, and secluded huts, has been described as "a technical triumph" and "the epitome of bunjinga, painting of the literati" (Hillier & Smith, p. 125).Kameda Bosai (1752-1826) was a Confucian scholar and literati painter. In 1774 he opened a Confucian school which saw Takizawa Bakin as one of its students, although he was forced to close it in 1797. He then turned to painting and calligraphy as his main source of income. He was often asked to write prefaces to books, such as those by Ike no Taiga and Sakai Hoitsu, masters of the nanga and Rinpa styles respectively.Kyochuzan is as one of the greatest printed works of the nanga style. The eminent Japanese art historian Jack Hillier wrote, "[It] distances itself from anything with a taint of topography and centres on those elements of grandeur, isolation, and the belittlement of man that the Chinese philosopher-painters found in the mountains... The literatus style is evident in the jerky brushstrokes and the loose structure of the rocks, and gains much from the collusion of the printmakers in contriving the crayony texture of mountain forms and trees, and the restriction of colors to those in bunjinga effusions" (pp. 24-25).This copy is a later printing, with red seals instead of black, no pagination, and variant mountains on Folio 12 verso. The colophon is

• Printing: later

Found via Rare Books Intel, a search across rare-book dealers, auction houses and marketplaces worldwide.