Title: Yin Peng Shi Huace (Yin Penshi’s Picture Album), Circa 1890-1925. Painting Album Depicting the Kokei Sansho (The Three Smiles of the Tiger Creek), Su Wu, Zhang Guolao, The Sixteen Luohans, and More. With 14 Highly Detailed Double Paged Paintings, with Ink Wash and Watercolors
Author: Chikasuke Fushiho or Fupeng Chikaakira
Condition: Very Good
A Meiji to Taisho Period, 19th to 20th century painting album by the artist Chikasuke Fushiho, also known as Fupeng Chikaakira, a student of Takamori Suigan (1847-1917).
The album is a common series of various historical and legendary figures of Tang and Song Dynasty history and art, including The Three Smiles of the Tiger Creek, Su Wu, Zhang Guo Lao, The Sixteen Luohans, and others.
There are 14 highly detailed, double paged paintings, each one utilizing various techniques indicative of the Southern School of painting, mixing ink wash imagery with watercolors, and more. Fushiho has taken great effort to ensure that each painting is rendered to the Chinese style of painting, with wrinkles and laughter lines added to the faces of each figure and individual.
A classical Chinese proverb story, and one of the more common themes of Chinese painting, the Tiger Creek is a valley stream in Lushan, and the monk Huiyuan, who lived in seclusion at Donglin Temple in the depths of the mountain, never left it beyond this boundary. One day, while sending off Tao Qian (Yuanming) and Lu Xiujing, they passed by the Tiger Creek while talking to each other, and when they realized it, the three of them burst out in loud laughter. It was first painted by Shi Ke of the Song Dynasty and has also been painted by many Japanese painters since, including Zhou Wen, Sesshu, and Kano Masanobu.
Su Wu was a famous minister of the Western Han Dynasty in China, and in the first year of the Tianhan period (100 BC), he was sent to the Xiongnu as a general but was captured by Chanyu and imprisoned on the shores of the North Sea (Lake Baikal) for 19 years because he would not go against his principles. During the reign of Emperor Zhao, he asked the Xiongnu to send Su Wu back, claiming that a letter from Wu had been attached to the leg of a wild goose that the emperor had shot while hunting in Shanglinyuan, and he was finally able to return to Han.
Zhang Guolao is a Chinese mythological figure and one of the Eight Immortals in the Taoist pantheon and was a Taoist fangshi (translated as "occultist-alchemist") who lived as a hermit on Zhongtiao Mountain.
The paintings have been finely bound in album format, with decorated, gold brocade covers.
One painting album in orihon format (24 x 18 cm), 14 leaves
This album is in very good shape, with minimal wear and slight ink staining to the covers. There is very little ink staining throughout, only noted once or twice.