Open Eyes and a Radiant Heart

The album, Open Eyes and a Radiant Heart (Katsumoku roshin) is a selection of paintings and calligraphies from Central Library's Dyer Collection.

Edinburgh City Libraries received two donations of the Henry Dyer Collection in 1945 and 1955, gifted by Marie Ferguson Dyer in honour of her father, Henry Dyer. These donations together consisted of 50 loose sheets of Japanese woodblock prints, a number of bound woodblock printed volumes, albums of paintings and calligraphies, scrolls and a collection of late 19th Century Japanese photographs attributed to Baron von Stillfried. The remainder of the Dyer Collection was gifted to the Mitchell Library (Glasgow) and Glasgow Museums (Nitshill).

This album contains 106 works, alternating between calligraphy and painting, by a diverse range of artists, apparently working in Edo (modern-day Tokyo). The painting subjects are dominated by landscapes, birds and flowers, with a small number of figurative works. The calligraphy pieces are done in both Chinese characters and native Japanese kana, and are typically brushed on richly decorated papers. Many of the works date from the 1850s, but the last twenty or so pages of the album were left unfilled.

Some of the artists represented are Mori Kansai (1814-1894), who studied in Osaka with the Maruyama-school artist Mori Tetsuzan (1775-1841), and later became a distinguished figure in the Kyoto art; Taki Katei (1830-1901), one of the most successful painters of his generation; Okamoto Shuki (1807-1862), a leading bird-and-flower painter in the final years of the shogunate; and Santo Kyosui (1816-1867), a son of Santo Kyozan as well as a pupil of Kita Busei, both of whom appear in this album.

Information about the volume and artists kindly provided by Dr Rosina Buckland (National Museum of Scotland) and Dr Takahashi Toshiro (Daito Bunka University, Tokyo).

You can find out more about Central Library's Dyer Collection on the Tales of one city blog.