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Domoto Insho Domoto Insho, 1891-1975
White Hawk (Hakutaka)
hanging scroll, ink, wash, gofun and gold on silk; depicting a white hawk perched on a snowy pine among falling gofun snowflakes, with gold wash in the background and falling gold leaves in the foreground; signed Toan Insho hitsu with two red artist seals, Toan, and Insho; sealed again at lower right corner, Minami danshaku (Baron Minami); the tomobako with the title on the lid, Hakutada, and signed on the inside of the lid, Toan Insho ji dai, with artist's seal Insho

painting: 130.7 by 36.5 cm
overall: 213 by 49 cm
SOLD

detail

sealsMounted on silk with ivory rollers. The title on the lid of the tomobako protected with brocade cover, and the box protected with an outer red lacquer box.

Domoto Insho (real name Sannosuke) was considered one of Kyoto's top Nihonga painters. He studied at the Kyoto Municipal Special School of Painting (Kyoto Shiritsu Kaiga Senmon Gakko) between 1879-1958; and later studied under Nishiyama Suisho (1879-1958). In 1921 Insho received a special award at the third Teiten (Imperial Art Exhibition) and 1925 he won the Teikoku Bijutsuin (Imperial Art Academy) prize at the sixth Teiten exhibition. In 1944 he was appointed member of the Imperial Art Board, and in 1950 the Japan Art Academy. He received the Order of Cultural Merit in 1961. Insho was particularly recognized for his Buddhist subjects- and completed over 600 commissions for fusuma panels at Buddhist temples in Kyoto and Osaka. His work was included in the ground-breaking exhibition, Nihonga, Transcending the Past, Japanese-Style Painting, 1868-1968, at the Saint Louis Art Museum in 1995 (see exhibition catalog by Ellen Conant, p. pl. 121, 291); and the exhibition at the Seattle Asian Art Museum in 1999, Modern Masters of Kyoto: The Transformation of Japanese Painting Traditions, Nihonga from the Griffith and Patricia Way Collection (see exhibition catalogue by Michiyo Morioka and Paul Berry, p. 282-287).

Given the classic Nihonga subject and technique, this painting appears to be a pre-war (early) work by this artist (possibly 1920's), before he began to explore abstraction in the post-war period.
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