Mōri Baiyū

Mōri Baiyū (毛利梅友): Literati Painter in Nagoya

Mōri Baiyū (毛利梅友, 1871–1953) was a Japanese painter of the Nanga school and worked in Nagoya – one of the centers where literati painting persisted well into the 20th century. The province of Owari around Nagoya had already developed a distinctive Nanga tradition in the 19th century with painters such as Yamamoto Baiitsu and Nakabayashi Chikutō, a tradition that Baiyū's generation was able to continue.

Baiyū, Baitomo, or Umetomo? On the Reading of the Artist Name

The artist name 梅友 is read Baiyū. Alongside this, the forms Baitomo and Umetomo are also in use, arising from differing readings of the same two characters. All three refer to the same painter. The character 梅 stands for the plum – a reference to the motif that runs through his work.

Training and Association Work

Baiyū studied under Mizutani Seikoku and under Tanomura Chokunyū, one of the leading literati painters of the Meiji period and successor to Tanomura Chikuden. He belonged to the Tōkai Art Society and founded the Japanese Central Society for Nanshū Painting. Such association foundings were essential for Nanga in those years: since literati painting found little place in the state-sponsored exhibition system, its representatives created their own forums for exhibitions and the promotion of young artists.

Plum Blossoms in Moonlight

Plum and moon form a pair of motifs that literati painting adopted from Chinese poetry. The plum blossoms on the bare branch while it is still cold; the moon gives the scene its hour and its coolness. Pictorially, the effect arises almost without color: the blossoms remain as white reserved areas, the moon is not painted but made visible through a glazed halo around it. This succeeds better on silk than on paper, because the ground absorbs the thin glazes more evenly. Such a kakemono belongs to the weeks before the beginning of spring.