Mountains Soaring High above Clouds, Autumn Mountain on a Fine Day

These hanging scroll paintings were once part of a set of twelve compositions likely mounted as a pair of folding screens. The landscape on the right features pointillist-like brushwork layering rounded hillsides, with unpainted areas meant to represent soft, drifting clouds. By contrast, the left-hand painting uses vertical brushstrokes to build an image of craggy peaks with twisted trees at their base. Barely visible is a family of deer, which are symbols of autumn in Japanese poetry.

Taiga was a leading literati painter of the eighteenth century, renowned as both an artist and calligrapher. He began his artistic life early, studying calligraphy by age six, followed by painting at fourteen. These scrolls were painted in his forties, a fertile period in which Taiga excelled at landscape subjects. The varied compositions of this set reflect his experimentation with brushwork and motifs synthesized after careful study of wide-ranging sources.