Flowering Cherry and Autumn Maples with Poem Slips
- Date:
- 1654/81
- Medium:
- Pair of six-panel screens; ink, color, gold and silver on silk
- Source:
- Art Institute of Chicago
Tosa Mitsuoki's masterwork in the screen format, this pair of six-panel folding screens treats the canonical Japanese seasonal subjects of cherry blossom and autumn maple, the two screens disposed as facing companion compositions that together survey the poetic-calendrical cycle of the Japanese year. Each tree is set against a brilliant gold-leaf ground and densely hung with paper poem slips ([tanzaku](/glossary/tanzaku)) inscribed with waka, the slips fluttering from the branches in such numbers that they read as a second layer of leaves. The conceit refers directly to the Heian-period courtly practice of hanging poetic compositions on flowering branches during seasonal poetry gatherings, a custom that supplied yamato-e painting with one of its most enduring decorative motifs. The Art Institute of Chicago preserves this pair of screens, dated by the museum to 1654-1681 - the years coinciding with Mitsuoki's appointment as edokoro azukari (head of the imperial Office of Painting) and his subsequent leadership of the Tosa school's revival at the Kyoto court. The screens deploy the full vocabulary of mature Tosa-school painting: ink underdrawing built up through layers of mineral pigment, gold and silver leaf laid down to define atmospheric and architectural space, and the careful integration of natural observation with the decorative pattern-making characteristic of the yamato-e tradition. They are widely considered the central works of Mitsuoki's career and one of the canonical statements of seventeenth-century Tosa-school painting.
second half of 17th century
Hanging scroll; ink and color on silk
17th century
Hanging scroll; ink, color, and gold on silk
second half of 17th century
Pair of six-panel folding screens; ink, color, and gold on silk
second half of 17th century
Hanging scroll; ink and color on silk
Flowering Cherry and Autumn Maples with Poem Slips was created by Tosa Mitsuoki (土佐光起) in 1654/81.
Flowering Cherry and Autumn Maples with Poem Slips depicts birds & flowers and autumn foliage.
