Artwork
Untitled

Untitled is an ink painting by the Impressionist artist Yokoyama Seiki. It dates from 1856 and is held in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
- Accession no.
- 2015.500.9.68
- Credit line
- Gift of Florence and Herbert Irving, 2015
About this work
The bamboo isn’t just a plant, it stands for resilience, a quiet symbol in a changing world.
A single bamboo stalk leans across blank paper. Its leaves fan out like fingers, some crisp, some blurred by ink washes.
Yokoyama Seiki painted this in 1856, when Japan was still closed to most outsiders. The bamboo isn’t just a plant, it stands for resilience, a quiet symbol in a changing world. The brushwork is quick, almost like a sketch, but every stroke feels deliberate.
To see how ink can suggest life without color, look up cross-hatching.
Subject & Meaning
Yokoyama Seiki's 1856 ink-on-paper hanging scroll represents a plant subject within the landscape genre. The artwork focuses on botanical iconography, utilizing traditional ink wash techniques to depict its vegetal motif. As an untitled work, it lacks a specific narrative or explicit symbolic program beyond its general representation of plant life, a common theme in Japanese landscape painting of the period.
Technique & Style
The work is executed in ink on paper and presented as a hanging scroll, a traditional East Asian format suited to vertical display. Classified as a painting, it belongs to the landscape genre and depicts plant subject matter. The monochromatic ink medium is consistent with mid-nineteenth-century Japanese painting practice, where tonal variation and brushwork carry the descriptive load in the absence of color. No additional information on handling, condition, or specific stylistic qualities is documented in the available sources.
History & Provenance
Created in 1856 in Japan, this hanging scroll titled Untitled was executed by the artist Yokoyama Seiki using ink on paper. The work, which depicts botanical subjects, entered the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where it is currently held. No specific details regarding the original commission or intermediate ownership history prior to its acquisition by the museum are provided in the available records.
The hanging scroll Untitled by Yokoyama Seiki, dated to 1856, is held in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The institution serves as the current location for this ink-on-paper landscape depicting plant life. While the work's creation in Japan and its mid-19th-century inception are documented, the available records do not list a specific accession number or detail any past exhibition history for this piece.
Context
Untitled (1856) is a hanging scroll by Japanese painter Yokoyama Seiki, depicting a plant motif in ink on paper. The work is cataloged as a landscape painting in the Metropolitan Museum of Art's collection and is discussed in scholarly references on Yokoyama's oeuvre.
The painting's reception and scholarly interpretation are situated within the broader context of 19th-century Japanese landscape art, reflecting contemporary aesthetic engagements with natural subjects.
Its placement in art history underscores the development of ink painting traditions during the Edo period, linking Yokoyama's practice to earlier landscape conventions while anticipating modernist approaches to abstraction.
Overview
Created in 1856, this hanging scroll by Yokoyama Seiki presents a solitary bamboo stalk rendered in ink on paper. The composition is minimal, with the plant extending diagonally across an otherwise empty surface, its foliage spreading outward in a fan-like arrangement.
Artist & collection


















