Hasegawa School, anonymous artist
Flowering Wisteria
Item number: T-3237LSize: H 64.8" x W 145.3" (164.5 x 369 cm)
Age: 18th century
Pair of six-panel folding screens Mineral pigments, ink and gofun on gold leaf
A remarkable pair of six-panel screens with a
luxurious detailed display of the flowers and wildlife
of late spring. The focal point of the screens
is unmistakably centered on a glorious proliferation
of flowering wisteria plants. In the left screen, the
wisteria plants grow over a bamboo lattice and
fence, seeming to overpower the structure with
their exuberance. In the right screen, the wisteria
flowers appear from behind a garden fence and
grow by an aged pine tree in the garden. In both
screens, we see an interesting contrast between
the domesticated and the wild, the garden and
nature: the two worlds seem to overlap and interact
with each other and the artist deliberately
leaves the boundary between them ambiguous.
Other plants appear as well, such as the low-lying
bamboo in the left screen and a splendid growth
of tree peony (shakuyaku) in the right screen. The
two screens are linked by the depiction of a pond,
within which we see lovingly detailed groups of
the flowering water lilies (hitsujigusa).
This luxurious hideaway from society is visited by
various flying objects: the screen to the right by
three red-breasted Daurian Redstarts (jōbitaki) and
the left screen by several types of butterflies. They
seem to thoroughly enjoy their private place of
refuge. The butterflies can be seen playfully flying
together, and, splashing into the water, a bird forms
delightful finger-like patterns of water around it.
The two right-most panels of the left screen reveal
a virtuosic brush display by the artist, as he lovingly
created a network of wisteria vines that seems to
want to take flight, reaching out for the flying butterflies
just beyond its reach.
This glorious pair of screens is made in the eighteenth
century by an anonymous artist. Judging
from the style of the work and the luxurious use of
mineral colors, the artist may have been part of a
workshop that produced screens for the interiors
of the wealthy: the merchant houses, restaurants,
temples, and homes of the aristocracy. With periodic
fires being a fact of urban living in pre-modern
Japan, there was always a market for refined works
of art to place within architectural interiors. At
peace and with a mostly flourishing commerce,
eighteenth century Japan underwent an especially
rich flowering of its arts and culture, and this painting
bears evidence to its riches in both the use
of luxurious materials and in the sheer energy of
expression.
Other examples of wisteria screens with similar
compositions can be seen in the Nihon byōbue
shūsei. According to Nakajima Junshi such screens
date from the eighteenth century. In fact, all the
screens (including the present screen pair) may
stem from the same source, one that Nakajima
ascribes to »mid-Edo variations of the Hasegawa
School.«1 The existence of an additional wisteria
screen pair of earlier date signed Hasegawa Sōen
(ac. 17th century), in the collection of the Seianji
Temple 盛安寺 in Shiga Prefecture, further heightens
the likelihood that the present pair of screens was
created by a follower of the Hasegawa School.2
|