Duck Man

Wild duck always return to the scene of their birth--so good Japanese believe. Last week the 8th Hirosaki Division was assembling under orders from the Emperor for duty in Manchuria. In hundreds of well-to-do Japanese homes parents hung long silken kakemono (scroll paintings) of wild ducks in the tokonoma* as tokens to bring their sons safely home again. Those who could afford it hung duck paintings by the man whom conservative Japanese regard as the greatest living wild fowl painter: Tetsuzan Hori, head of the Tokyo and Kyoto Fine Art Schools, one of the last exponents of the ancient Shijo school of naturalistic painters.

Duck Painter Hori was in New York last week opening an exhibition of duck paintings at the Maurel Gallery, paintings that had already received the acclaim of Paris, London, the Detroit Art Institute, the Denver Art Museum.

Long scrutiny of ducks has given lean, bristle-lipped Tetsuzan ("Iron Mountain") Hori one great round eye, another squinted to half the normal size. Born in Kyoto 46 years ago, he was dedicated by his parents as an artist almost as soon as he could walk. He was apprenticed to the late great Seiho Takeuchi who made him study the lives and habits of wild fowl for 16 years before he might set brush to silk panel. For several hours a day he was made to squat in the marshes, by the duck ponds, silently meditating (a practice he still pursues). When Seiho Takeuchi decided that Hori knew enough of the plumage, the habits, the anatomy, the temperament of ducks he was allowed to begin painting on silk panels with a camel's hair brush, not with oil paints, but with Chinese ink or Sumi.

Today Tetsuzan Hori is recognized by naturalists as a duck authority. He has lectured on ducks, published monographs on ducks. Main reason for his visit to the U. S. was not to exhibit his paintings but to sit by U. S. duck ponds, meditate on U. S. ducks. He announced last week that the two most interesting birds in the U. S. were the Canada goose and the American wood duck. U. S. critics were deeply impressed with his technical dexterity, his uncanny reproduction of the texture of feathers, but, accustomed to the ideals of modern European paintings, found the pictures themselves reminiscent of late-Victorian dining rooms.

*The tokonoma or Corner of Honor is a small niche in one corner of the traditional Japanese parlor. Always before the tokonoma is a vase of flowers; in it hangs a single picture, generally the only picture in the house. The picture in the tokonoma is changed weekly or monthly according to the extent of the owner's collection.

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