Maruyama Okyo introduced a whole new level of naturalism to dragon paintings. The clouds swathing the dragon here are particularly realistic with their soft feel and their blend of subdued light and dark hues. Okyo achieved this realism by eschewing clear outlines.
In Okyo’s paintings, we can find some borders demarcating the physical bodies from the surrounding air, but the bodies themselves are not outlined. Outlines impede the naturalistic depiction of air and space. Okyo himself was aware of this and he spoke about “using the ‘kuma’ technique well and keeping ‘kukuri’ to a minimum” (Banshi, a diary written by Okyo’s patron Prince Abbot Yujo). Outlines disappeared from Western art during the transition from medieval to Renaissance painting and were replaced instead by the use of shading. ‘Kukuri’ can be likened to outlines and ‘kuma’ to simple shading techniques. Okyo’s statement is not a simple elucidation of his ‘tsuketate’ technique (a technique that creates gradations by varying the volume of ink applied between the base and tip of the brush) but rather a foreshadowing of the technique’s emergence. Of course, the ‘kuma’ and ‘tsuketate’ techniques don’t allow for subtle gradations and are thus quite different from the shading methods used in Western painting to give form to objects.

The complex forms of the clouds are not suited to ‘tsuketate,’ with the technique avoided here. Simple gradations are apparent in the white clouds, with two or three tiers of kuma shading used to express shifts from light to dark. The light ink in the pale darkness is rendered in a neutral gray neither too watery nor too inky. Though almost the same gray tone, the dragon melds seamlessly into the darkness with no discernable outlines.

This spatial representation is made possible because dragons are traditionally portrayed in the dark. However, though gofun (seashell pigment) is used to accentuate the whiteness of the dragon’s flashes and the clouds, the inky blackness of the surrounding darkness is not emphasized, with the painting lacking the ferocity of traditional dragon depictions. The range of the light and shade moves towards brightness.

Okyo’s early dragon paintings often feature outlines and brush marks. However, these outlines and brush marks are absent from the dragon and clouds in his Meiwa 7 (1770) work Dragon and Tiger (Maruyama Okyo Picture Album, fig. 101 (Kyoto Shimbun)). As such, this period seems to mark a turning point for Okyo. The clouds in this work still have no distinct shape, though. Three-dimensional cloud forms finally appear in An’ei 2 (1773)’s Dragon in Clouds (folding screen, Important Cultural Property). Okyo imbues these clouds with vigor through their dynamic shapes rather than the power of the brushstrokes. This work appeared a year after Dragon in Clouds screen, and although it retains the rocks and billowing waves of the earlier work, it is no mere rehash, with the movement of the clouds more restrained and the space comparatively calmer, for instance. Okyo’s dragon paintings subsequently grew simpler in style and would often just feature the dragon’s head and the surrounding clouds. No other Okyo dragon paintings with such complex compositions have been found. In this sense, Dragon in Clouds screen and this work hold a prominent place in Okyo’s oeuvre of dragon paintings.

Maruyama Okyo (painter; 1733–1795)
Painter from Tamba Province (near Kyoto). Okyo moved to Kyoto in his youth and studied with the Kano master Ishida Yutei. During the 1760s, under the patronage of Prince Abbot Yujo of the temple Enman’in (Otsu, now Shiga Prefecture), Okyo studied Song and Yuan painting, Rinpa and immersed himself in sketching from life (shasei). The resulting synthesis provided the basis for the Maruyama-Shijo school, founded by Okyo. He is known for his many disciples, including Nagasawa Rosetsu and Goshun, who came to dominate painting in Kyoto at the turn of the 19th century.