Hasegawa School
Fishermen’s Nets by a Pine Grove
Item number: T-3025LSize: H 65.7" x W 139" (167 x 353 cm)
Age: mid 17th century
Pair of six-panel folding screens
Mineral pigments, ink, and gold leaf on paper
This striking pair of six-panel screens depicts fishing nets drying by an ocean shore and a dense pine forest—a scene ripe with allusions to classical poetry. The screen is of the matsuhama, or »pine harbor« type from the Hasegawa school, a painting tradition that combines the greens and browns of a pine grove with the deep blue of the ocean, and with, in this screen, the shimmering gold sections highlighting the interplay between the primary colors of the trees and water.1
The theme of fishermen’s nets set out to dry is also a topic of classical poetry. The empty, drying nets provide not only visual interest but also symbolic meaning, as symbols of future romantic capture and possession—or of empty, unrequited love. In paintings they became a staple of landscapes, such as in the classical Eight Views paintings that depict a fishermen’s village as part of the series of eight canonical views.2 Here, however, the artist has emphasized the size and number of nets, so that they form a viable counterpart to the imposing pine trees.
The artist of the present screen creatively combined these themes: not only do we see the interplay of the colors, but also a rhythmic repetition of simple geometric shapes—such as the triangles of the nets and the treetops. Against these sharp angles, the artist contrasts the soft circles of the ocean shore and gold clouds. The result is a pair of screens that work well on both visual and symbolic levels.
The Hasegawa school is a school of painters established by the famous Hasegawa Tōhaku (1539–1610). A group of painters around him existed and continued painting large-scale works, such as screens and sliding fusuma doors, during the seventeenth century. We know the names of a handful of these artists, but by no means all, as they lacked a historian of their line and steady official patronage.3 Their works ranged from ink paintings to colorful landscape paintings, and often combined moriage techniques of raised sections in the latter, such as in the high-relief pine branches of the present screens. Similar works of the Hasegawa school and related groups from this period can be seen in various collections, both in Japan as well as in the West.4
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