Discussion

Autumn Colors

Summer is over and autumn is here. Children are back to school, and some adults are, too. The holiday season begins with Halloween creepies and crawlies and things that go bump in the night circulating door to door as they hold out candy bags to collect treats. Temperatures are cooler (thankfully) and the chance of rain improves in normally dry Southern California. Last Saturday night was evidence of that. Most of all, autumn is when many trees begin to get ready for winter by shutting down their chlorophyll factories, causing leaves to turn color before falling. (Or as Lucy once said to Linus in the Peanuts comic strip, "They jump off to get away from the squirrels.") There are places where the result is a riot of color.

My painting this week uses a few autumn trees in a setting inspired by the Japanese tea garden in the San Diego Zoo. There is a little island surrounded by koi-filled water.

The formal Japanese word for koi is nishikigoi (literally: brocaded carp) because of their colors. In Japan, Koi are symbolic of luck, prosperity, good fortune, and perseverance.

That tea garden also has a Japanese stone lantern similar to this one.

Japanese stone lanterns (tōrō), originally imported from China, were once only used in Buddhist temples to illuminate walkways at night. Lit stone lanterns were considered to be an offering to Buddha. They began to be used in Shintō shrines and private homes in the Heian period (794–1185). During the Azuchi-Momoyama period (1568–1600), tea masters began to use them as garden ornaments. 

Working from the ground up, the various sections of a tōrō represent the Buddhist conceptions of earth, water, fire (the section encasing the flame when the lantern is lit), air, and void or spirit. The top points toward the sky.

Today, tōrō have lost all of their religious significance. They are just quaint garden ornaments.

I have two types of tree in my demonstration painting. One is the Japanese maple tree (momiji in Japanese), the leaves of which turn a bright orange and red in the fall. This photo was taken in Balboa Park's Japanese Friendship Garden. I got it off the web, but you have a good chance of seeing something very much like this in person if you visit there at this time of year.

Here is a closer look at the leaves.

The other type of tree in my painting is the ginkgo tree (ichō in Japanese and Ginkgo biloba in Latin). A common name is the maidenhair tree. Like many trees, its leaves appear in the late spring. 

Its leaves are fan-shaped.

Ginkgo trees are especially interesting because they are regarded as living fossils with no known living relatives. Actual fossils very similar to today's ginkgo have been found that are over 190 million years old. They have a number of unique or rare characteristics. One of these is their sexual orientation. Some ginkgo trees are male and others are female. In the photos below, the male organs are on the left and the female organs are on the right.

Reproduction begins via wind-borne pollination. Nuts mature as leaves are turning yellow in the early fall.

Autumn ginkgo trees are a spectacular sight.

Its leaves are still fan-shaped.

Fully ripened ginkgo nuts fall to the ground and can make quite a mess.

When stepped on, ginkgo nuts release an extremely pungent, nauseating odor. They can be eaten, but only after being roasted. Raw ginkgo nuts have a strong toxin that make people seriously ill. It is recommended that gloves be worn if shelling the nuts before roasting.

Artwork 

Both Japanese maples and gingko trees make fine bonsai. Here is the maple tree bonsai.

Here is the gingko tree bonsai. This is a real photo. The halo is an artifact of the lighting used in the shot.

Unknown Kanō School Artist

It also isn't known when this byōbu was painted. It is a nice painting, however. It's title is Fall Into Winter Landscape. "Read" the painting from right to left.

Katsushika Hokusai (1760 - 1849)

Hokusai was most famous for his landscapes and for several series of landscape ukiyo-e. The print below is Hokusai's contribution to a series titled The Hundred Poems by the Hundred Poets. Hokusai's painting, titled Poem by Ariwara no Narihira, shows that it is an autumn scene by the leaves floating down the river and maple trees in the distant background. The poem is in the upper right corner. It was produced in the 1835 to 1836 timeframe.

Okamoto Toyohiko (1773 - 1845)

Toyohiko was an Edo Period (1603 - 1868) painter and print maker. Born into a Karashiki merchant family that ran a wine shop, he apprenticed himself to a painting master in Edo for training. His specialty was fῡkei-ga (landscapes). Here is an autumn fῡkei-ga hanging scroll of his

Ryūkōsai Jokei (fl. 1777 - 1809)

Ryūkōsai was a painter and ukiyo-e artist. He is best known for his yakusha-e (kabuki actor prints). He was either the founder or co-founder of the Ōsaka school of ukiyo-e. This 1799 hanging scroll is titled Bird in a Ginkgo Tree.