Peaches, Pomegranate, and Fingered Citron

Peaches, Pomegranate, and Fingered Citron is a folding-fan painting by Yamamoto Baiitsu in ink and color on paper, dated 1832 and held by the Metropolitan Museum of Art (accession 2015.300.189). The three fruits depicted — peach (mo), pomegranate (sekiryū), and fingered citron (bukkan, the Japanese reading of the Chinese name foshou or "Buddha's hand") — together form the Three Abundances (sanduo) of the Chinese literati and decorative-arts tradition: peach for long life, pomegranate for many sons, fingered citron for great happiness. Baiitsu's fan composition, painted in his fiftieth year, demonstrates the small-scale display piece for which he was also well known among Kyoto literati patrons: the curved arc of the fan accommodates the three fruits as a loose still-life arrangement, with restrained color and a calligraphic signature placed in the right-hand margin. The work entered the Met in 2015 as part of the Mary Griggs Burke Collection and is one of the museum's most often-reproduced examples of his small-format painting.