Soken Landscape Picture Album (Soken sansui gafu) : [volume 1]

Yamaguchi, Soken, 1759-1818 · 1818 · Kyoto: Kamisaka Kanbei 上阪勘兵衛 · 13 pictures

A Japanese woodblock-printed landscape picture album by Yamaguchi Soken, published in Kyoto in 1818 by Kamisaka Kanbei, a painter's manual of ink-and-wash scenery for artists to copy. The pages pair single-motif studies of trees, rocks, water and small figures with faint grey wash behind the black outlines. A designer could draw on the economical line work and the way a few pine, rock and stream forms suggest a whole landscape with plenty of empty paper.

Thomas J. Watson Library, The Metropolitan Museum of Art · No known copyright restrictions · More from this library