Flowers of Autumn and Winter

Flowers of Autumn and Winter is a six-panel folding screen in ink, colors, and gold leaf on paper, dating to the nineteenth century and held by the Art Institute of Chicago. The screen continues the Rinpa preoccupation with seasonal flowers and grasses arranged across a gold ground, with the composition organized around the plants that traditional Japanese poetry associates with the colder half of the year: chrysanthemum, autumn grasses, and the early winter flowering plants whose appearance signals the seasonal transition.