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.

The gold-ground format is the signature surface of the Rinpa school, established in the work of Sōtatsu and brought to its classical expression by Kōrin, and Kiitsu's screen takes its place in that lineage while developing the idiom in his own direction. The arrangement of plants across the six panels reads as a single extended composition, with motifs grouped and dispersed in a designed rhythm that demonstrates the school's interest in abstract pattern derived from natural observation. The handling of the leaves and stems shows the tarashikomi technique that defines Rinpa surface treatment, with the wet-into-wet pigment producing the mottled effects characteristic of the school.

The Art Institute's holdings of Kiitsu also include other significant works, and Flowers of Autumn and Winter is one of the most important Rinpa screens preserved in a North American collection. It demonstrates Kiitsu's command of the large-scale decorative format and his ability to extend the seasonal subject matter of the Rinpa tradition into compositions that read as both refined paintings and architectural decoration.