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Recent Additions to the Collection MOMAT Collection Newsletter of the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo Hayami Gyoshu, Scroll of Sketches (Winter Peonies) , 1926

Tsurumi Kaori (Curator, Department of Fine Arts)

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HAYAMI, Gyoshu (1894–1935)
Scroll of Sketches (Winter Peonies)
HAYAMI, Gyoshu (1894–1935)
Scroll of Sketches (Winter Peonies)
1926
Pencil and color on paper, scroll
31.4 × 377.4cm (33.3 × 496.4cm including mounting)
Purchased FY2019

The museum was able to acquire a work that had been entrusted to the collection for many years, namely Hayami Gyoshu’s Scroll of Sketches (Winter Peonies) (referred to below as “the MOMAT work”), consisting of his sketches from 1926 made into the form of a picture scroll. The date is known thanks to an inscription by the artist, “Peonies by Gyoshu, February 1926,” at the beginning of the scroll. With a total length of 377.4cm, it was made by connecting four sheets of paper of various lengths.

Incidentally, another Gyoshu picture scroll of peonies is known to exist. Peonies (Scroll of Sketches) (total length 309.5 cm) is in the collection of the Yamatane Museum of Art. The year is not inscribed, but this series of sketches is thought to have been made around the same time as those of the MOMAT work, as it features the same approach to drawing, in its precise shapes made with a finely sharpened pencil, and application of color in its blurred wash of pink (thought to be made with the deep red pigment enji).

There is one more related work, Peonies (color on silk, 1926), in the collection of the Toyama Memorial Museum. Produced in September of the same year, it appears to adapt the same shape as the eighth peony from the right on the MOMAT work. It would be ideal if everyone could also view Peonies in person, preferably scrutinizing it through a monocle. On close examination, the gofun (white pigment) applied to the edges of the petals is thin and homogeneous like film on the surface of hot milk, and the petals are veiled with networks of extremely fine lines of white or pink. Viewers are guaranteed to be enraptured by the picture’s exquisite surface.

In light of this painting, these sketches can be regarded as preparatory. In fact, Gyoshu tested out several approaches in the MOMAT work, and they can be divided into those adopted in the painting and those not adopted, one of the former being color applied so that extends outside the outlines. The pink bleeding out of the outlines into the space around makes an impression like that of fragrance emanating from the flowers. Gyoshu could not have been unaware of this effect, and while he used the technique more modestly in the painting than in the MOMAT work, the pink around the flowers and the green around the leaves are both lightly blurred.

So, what were some of the approaches not adopted? They include emphasis of outlines and shading with pencil, as in the fourth through seventh flowers from the right. At the sketching stage, was Gyoshu considering painting options such as strengthening the contour lines with ink or adding shading in the ink-wash painting style? These sketches, which have a different effect from that of the completed painting, enable us to imagine how this might have looked.


(Gendai no me, Newsletter of The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo No.635)

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