After Ike no Taiga’s “Horse Market in a Mountain Village”

Watanabe Kazan Japanese

On view at The Met Fifth Avenue in Gallery 231

Stables appear nestled into a mountain landscape, surrounded by a vast herd of horses masterfully rendered using minimal brushstrokes and a reduced palette—soft gray and orange-red, with areas left unpainted to indicate white steeds. The horse wranglers, depicted in a similarly abbreviated style, merge with the crowd. This painting, along with its narrative inscription, is a faithful copy by Watanabe Kazan of Ike no Taiga’s renowned work Horse Market in a Mountain Village (1755), housed today in the Idemitsu Museum of Arts, Tokyo.

Born into a family of lower-ranking samurai, Kazan pursued painting from a young age, approaching it as a means of earning a living. He studied under several prominent painters of various schools in Edo, particularly Tani Bunchō (1763–1840).

After Ike no Taiga’s “Horse Market in a Mountain Village”, Watanabe Kazan (Japanese, died 1841), Hanging scroll; ink and color on paper, Japan

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After Ike no Taiga’s “Horse Market in a Mountain Village”, Watanabe Kazan (Japanese, died 1841), Hanging scroll; ink and color on paper, Japan
After Ike no Taiga’s “Horse Market in a Mountain Village”, Watanabe Kazan (Japanese, died 1841), Hanging scroll; ink and color on paper, Japan

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