screen;
painting
- Museum number
- 1913,0501,0.271
- Description
-
Painting, six-panel folding screen, pair with Jap.Ptg.1274. Birds and flowers of winter: two white egrets on willow tree in snow; another three on rock on left; two on ground on right; one flying in sky; clouds in gold in background. Colours and gold on paper.
- Production date
- 18thC
- Dimensions
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Height: 154.40 centimetres
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Width: 364 centimetres
- Curator's comments
-
The early Kano school took as its model the great Chinese landscape painters of the Song. Increasingly, however, the highly modulated ink outlines of this tradition were combined with gold leaf and the spectacularly decorative colouring of the native Yamato-e school, with its seasonal motifs. The contrived compositions here of the pine and willow bending towards the centre are influenced by famous examples painted in Kyoto by both Tan'yu and Sansetsu in the earl 17th century. The date of execution, however, was probably at least a century later. A former attribution was to Watanabe Shiko (1683-1755), who painted in both the Kano and Rinpa styles. (label copy, TTC 1997)
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Hizo Nihon bijutsu taikan Vol 1
This pair of screens depicts the birds and flowers of spring and winter and is the sole work to survive with this particular combination of motifs. The earth and sky are gold and the intervening colors deep. These screens hence employ the 'dami-e' method of color application, popular during the Momoyama period, in which brilliant colors were applied almost as thickly as lacquer. The usual tension and animation characterizing painting of this period are evident here, though the scenes are unusually tranquil. In the Momoyama period trees were usually depicted as great, vital living entities, their thick trunks and branches often made to extend even beyond the borders of the paintings. Here, the miniaturization of the limbs of the great pine and willow trees - tucked neatly within the confines of the painting - reminds the viewer of bonsai.
The style does seem to have inherited something of the geometric composition characterizing the painting of the Genna (1615-24) and Kan'ei (1624-44) eras, exemplified in the works of Kano Tanyu (1602-74) and Kano Sansetsu (1589-1651). However, the painter seems less likely to have been an actual disciple of either artist than to have been a successor active at least a generation later, perhaps after the start of the eighteenth century. The snowcapped narcissus at the extreme left of the left-hand screen's winter scene is especially important to any effort to date these works. Apart from a few unusual paintings by artists of the Kano school produced in the Momoyama and Edo periods such as the folding screen 'Autumn Grasses' (Imperial Household Agency), very few works depict the narcissus until the tastes of literati artists working in the Chinese-influenced tradition had become better known. This is one argument for dating the work to the eighteenth century.
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Attribution to Watanabe Shiko should be given serious consideration (Nakabe Yoshitaka, Jan. 2010)
- Location
- Not on display
- Exhibition history
-
Exhibited:
2006 18 Mar-4 Jun, Beijing, Capital Museum, Treasures of the World's Cultures
2007 3 Feb-27 May, Taipei, National Palace Museum, Treasures of the World's Cultures
2007 14 Sep-2 Dec, Hong Kong Museum of Art, Treasures of the World's Cultures
2013-2014, Oct-April BM Japanese Galleries, ‘Japan from prehistory to the present’
2021 October - April 2022, BM Mitsubishi Corporation Japanese Galleries
- Acquisition date
- 1913
- Acquisition notes
- The collection of Japanese and Chinese paintings belonging to Arthur Morrison was purchased by Sir William Gwynne-Evans, who presented it to the British Museum in 1913.
- Department
- Asia
- Registration number
- 1913,0501,0.271
- Additional IDs
-
Asia painting number: Jap.Ptg.1275 (Japanese Painting Number)