Pine with Narcissus

Pine with Narcissus (松に水仙, Matsu ni Suisen) is a hanging-scroll painting by Taki Katei, dated Meiji 19 (1886), held by the Tokyo National Museum. The composition pairs two of the most heavily symbolic plants in the East Asian painting tradition: the pine (matsu), associated with longevity, evergreen virtue, and the Confucian ideal of moral steadfastness through the winter, and the narcissus (suisen), associated with early-spring renewal and, in the Chinese literati tradition Katei inherited, with the qualities of refinement and quiet elegance celebrated in classical poetry. The work was produced at a key moment in Katei's career: the new Imperial Palace was then under construction in Tokyo, and Katei was at work on the bird-and-flower paintings for which he would be paid more than any other painter when the palace was completed two years later in 1888. The Tokyo National Museum holding is one of the principal Japanese public-collection examples of Katei's densely colored Meiji-period nanga manner and an important counterweight to the better-known Met and Minneapolis works in the Western literature on the artist.