A Rishi Stirring Up a Storm
Medium
watercolor and gouache over graphite
Dimensions
image: 25 × 33.7 cm · sheet: 27.3 × 38.9 cm
Classification
Drawing
Department
Drawings
Museum
Cleveland Museum of Art
Credit
Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund
Accession Number
1939.267
Tags
About this artwork
In the late 19th century, John La Farge was one of the first American artists to take a serious interest in Japanese art. This watercolor was produced after La Farge visited Japan in 1886, where he studied Daoism and painting with the writer Okakura Kakuzō (1862–1913). Here, he employed Western modeling and depth, building the water’s mass through transparent washes of light and dark blue, but also simulated the asymmetrical composition, lyrical tone, and bright blue color palette of contemporar...