@article{oai:tobunken.repo.nii.ac.jp:00006992,
 author = {島田, 修二郎 and Shimada, Shujiro},
 issue = {165},
 journal = {美術研究, The bijutsu kenkyu : the journal of art studies},
 month = {Apr},
 note = {The two landscape paintings owned by the Kōtō-in Temple, Kyoto, traditionally attributed to the Chinese painter Wu Tao-tzu of the T'ang Dynasty, are reckoned among the greatest masterpieces of Chinese landscape art. No detailed study has been published to date regarding the artist and the age of these paintings. The traditional attribution to Wu Tao-tzu has existed since before the second half of the seven eenth century. Presumably the attribution was partly due to the fact that they, along with a picture of the Buddhist divinity Kannon in Sanskrit: Avalokitesvara in the so-called Wu Tao-tzu style, were treated as a triptych. The attribution, however, is absolutely impossible.
     The two paintings are considered to be autumn and winter landscapes from an original group of landscapes of the four seasons. It has been noticed since old that the autumn landsdape has a trace of having been inscribed with Chinese characters which, obliterated and illegible, have been regarded as an insignificant scribbling. The characters are written in a position as if they were a string hanging from the spray extending to the right from the top of a tree in the foreground. We find onthis portion of the painting a distinct trace of an attempt to wash the charac ters away. However, the characters are not absolutely illegible. A close examination discloses that there are three characters, and that the first and third characters read Li 李 first name of a person and Hua 畫 (means “painted by”, respectively. The writer has presumed that, judged from the cunningly selected position and the careful style of script, the inscription is not a scribbling but a signature by the artist. The writer's surmise from a stylistic study was that this artist with the first name Li possibly was Li T'ang of the Sung Dynasty, though it could not be confirmed as the secend character was not clear.
     The writer in 1950, took an infra-red photograph of the inscription, and enlarged it to about seventeen times of the original size. The second character was clearly read T'ang 唐, and the writer's presumption proved right. The inscription can be recognized genuine from the viewpoint of calligraphy.
     It has been very often the case in Japan in connoiseur of Chinese paintings to disregard the genuine inscriptions and seal-marks in them, and to attribute them to different artists. The case of the present landscapes was one of them. Probably it was that a supposedly authentic attribution to Wu Tao-tzu caused an attempt to erase the signature by the true artist Li T'ang. We find an example of authentification of the attribution in a certificate of connoiseurship related with the paintings, written by Unkoku Tōyo, a Japanese painter of the Unkoku School active in the second half of the seventeenth century.
     The Hua Shan Shui Chüeh (Secrets of Painting Landscapes) written in about 1221 by Li Chêng-sou and other reliable manuscripts in China state that Li Tang was the first man among the landscape painters in the Imperial Art Academy of the South Sung Court, and that he established the Academic style of landscape art which was entirely different from the traditional ones. They also state that in his depiction of mountains and rocks he used the technique Ta Fu P'i Ts'un large-axecleave-fissure which is to depict them in shapes as if cloven with an axe. These descriptions of Li T'ang's style are thoroughly applicable to that of the present landscapes. His technique of Ta Fu P'i Ts'un displayed in them is not such an established and therefore conventional ones as those of Hsia Kuei and Ma Yüan, but free and vivid because presumably earlier and originally his. We can not point out any specimen of Chinese landscape painting, painted in this style of depicting rocks by straight sweeping and short rubbing of the brush, which can be considered as older than these two. It is fairly reasonable to believe that the styles of Hsia Kuei and Ma Yüan were developed from this precedent of Li T'ang's. In composition, too, they are precedented by Li T'ang, for their favorite way of depicting a narrow scene in an exceedingly one-sided composition is already seen in these paintings, especially in the autumn landscape. The two landscapes in our concern, showing such elements leading to the Hsia Kuei and Ma Yüan styles and having the signature of Li T'ang, may be safely attributed to him.},
 pages = {12--25},
 title = {高桐院所蔵の山水画について},
 year = {1952}
}