Shiro no aru fūkei

Hyakutake Kaneyuki's Landscape with a Castle is one of his early oil paintings, depicting a tranquil riverside scene at the outskirts of an industrial town. In the foreground, two figures are diligently working by the shore. Across the river, red brick factories with billowing smoke sit on the riverbank while transport barges float by. In the distance, a castle towers on the top of a hill, lined with an array of buildings casting their shadows on the river below.

The lower left corner of this painting reads "Y. Hiakatake 1876," making it one of his first works signed with a date.

Hyakutake painted Landscape with a Castle in London, about a year after he had started painting lessons with Thomas Miles Richardson Jr. A skilled landscape artist, like his father, he was fond of painting the Scottish Highlands. Hyakutake may have joined him on his regular trips north, where he painted a similar scene featuring Barnard Castle. That work was created after two additional years of weekly lessons and already shows notable improvement compared to this earlier piece, Landscape with a Castle.