A temple hall

Dated 1885, this surimono depicts a temple hall - a Buddhist architectural subject of the kind that appeared frequently in kyoka verse and in surimono illustrations of the season's pilgrimages and festivals. Zeshin treats the temple hall with the spare brush manner he brought to all his late surimono: a few weighted lines establish the architecture, with restrained color and unprinted paper carrying the rest of the image. The Art Institute of Chicago dates the sheet to 1885, placing it alongside the other surimono of that prolific year in the museum's collection. By this point in his career, Zeshin was an elder of the Tokyo art world, with both lacquer panels at international expositions and surimono in private circulation; his ability to move between these very different audiences - foreign collectors at world's fairs and the small literary circles of his Edo youth - is one of the most striking features of his late-career production.