Mount Asama

This screen depicts Mount Asama in Shinshu and is a rare work in that, though a folding screen, it is painted in oil. It is oil on paper and measures 149.0 x 342.4 cm. It is considered one of the largest oil paintings of the Edo period and is designated an Important Cultural Property. Against a blue sky, white smoke rises from a large pinkish mountain, and a single tree stands in the foreground. Lumber lies on the ground at the left of the picture, and at the far left trees felled with their leaves still thick are scattered. No people are seen, and the atmosphere is strange.

This work had several stages of preparatory drawings, and a drawing found in recent years showed a person splitting a tree with an ax and a person keeping watch over a charcoal kiln. In the final painting the figures disappeared, leaving only the lumber on the ground and the smoke from the charcoal kiln. The shadows cast by the lumber were also removed, which suggests the subject changed from everyday scenes to the landscape itself. The lack of three-dimensionality and depth may also have been intended.

The artist, Aodo Denzen, associated with scholars of Dutch learning who studied European culture, and he studied Western painting and made copperplate prints and oil paintings. This is considered a representative work of Denzen, a technically skilled artist.