Untitled [Bats Flying Over Water]

Kishi Gantai trained in the studio of his father Ganku (1749–1839), founder of the Kishi School. This atelier of Japanese painting was active in Kyoto from the late Edo (1603–1868) to the Meiji (1868–1912) periods. With brother-in-law Kishi Renzan, Gantai headed the Kishi School studio after his father’s death.

In this landscape—which is executed in Gantai’s preferred medium of monochrome ink—one sees two bats flying above a rocky stream on a misty day. The bat is an auspicious motif in traditional Chinese culture, and appears often on architectural elements, costumes, and other kinds of everyday items. This nocturne creature became a symbol of good fortune or blessing across East Asia (China, Korea, and Japan) because in Chinese the word “bat” (fu) shares the same pronunciation with the word for “blessing” (fu).

Several stylistic features of this hanging scroll painting remind one of the contemporary Japanese Nanga School aesthetic: Gantai’s restricted palette of shades of black ink and the artist’s desire to present the rhythmic forces of nature through expressive brushstrokes and abstracted shapes. Since Nanga painters focused on capturing the spirit of objects rather than mere outward forms, realistic colors and precisely rendered details were not a goal when painting a scene from nature.