Lotus in Bloom

Lotus in Bloom is a hanging-scroll painting by Taki Katei in ink and color on silk, held by the Minneapolis Institute of Art (accession number 98.18.12). The lotus had been one of the central subjects of the East Asian literati and Buddhist painting traditions for more than a millennium, charged with associations of Buddhist purity (the flower rises pure from muddy water), Confucian moral integrity (the eleventh-century scholar Zhou Dunyi's famous "On the Love of the Lotus"), and seasonal beauty. Katei's treatment combines the close observational drawing of leaves, stems, and blossoms that the late Edo nanga tradition demanded with the heavily worked color on silk that defined his Meiji-period style. The composition shows the lotus at the moment of full bloom, with broad leaves and pink-white flowers rendered in the meticulous saimitsuga manner for which Katei became known in his late career. As a representative example of his approach to the lotus subject, the Minneapolis painting sits within the small but important group of Katei works in American museum collections and demonstrates the continuity of the Chinese-style literati bird-and-flower tradition into the Meiji nihonga period.