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Lot Essay
This magnificent pair of screens belongs to a genre of lyrical paintings of flowers, grasses, and other plants that flourished around the middle of the seventeenth century and became a popular speciality of the Sotatsu studio. The subject is an imaginary garden in which flowers of all four seasons are in bloom. Overflowing with vitality and dazzling against an all-gold ground, this lush profusion of natural beauty is dense with plants for spring and summer on the right screen, more open for autumn and winter on the left.
The use of an abstract gold ground, a subtle and rather complex composition of clusters of flowers arranged in artful bouquets, and the puddling of ink (especially noticeable here in the leaves) was initiated by Tawaraya Sotatsu, the founder of the Rimpa school, who was active from roughly 1600 until 1640. Painting ateliers led by Sotatsu’s followers continued through the end of the seventeenth century. On the whole, the identity of these followers remains a mystery; most did not sign their work but simply impressed one of Sotatsu’s seals – especially the round, vermilion-red relief seal reading I’nen that appears on the example shown here – on their paintings. Only two followers of Sotatsu, Tawaraya Sosetsu (active ca. 1640–50) and Kitagawa Sosetsu (active in the 1680s) are known by name. In 1642, Tawaraya Sosetsu became the official painter in-residence for the Maeda family, the daimyo of Kaga province (Ishikawa Prefecture) on the Japan Sea, north of Kyoto. A workshop was established in Kanazawa, the site of the Maeda castle. The screens illustrated here are likely to have come from one of the Sosetsu studios in the mid-seventeenth century.
These paintings share with other Sosetsu screens a loose progression from early spring on the far right side of the right screen with fern fronds and young pines, for example, to summer with iris and hollyhocks, followed by fall with chrysanthemums, and early winter with narcissus on the left screen. The inclusion of vegetables here – eggplants and squash – is rather unusual. As on other examples from the Sosetsu atelier, certain plants are paired or intertwined. Typically, such favourite pairings include wisteria and yellow roses on the far right of the right screen, miscanthus grasses and bush clover on the right side of the left screen, and narcissus and red berries at the far left. Typically, also, the artist composes in such a way that the top of the screen functions as an element of the composition: wisteria seems to be suspended from the frame on the right to form a canopy, as though hanging from a trellis. The artist rendered the structure of each motif with attention to detail. A balance of vivid colours and neutral tones enhances the realism of the imagery. Plants are depicted delicately without outline, in the so-called “boneless” manner. In places, the gold-leaf ground is visible through the thin wash of color. Stylistically, the screens belong to the same lineage as Flowers and Grasses of the Four Seasons of 1620–50 in the Asia Society, New York.
The screens are abstract and decorative in a way that is uniquely Japanese, but there is at the same time a keen sense of naturalism not only in the attention to accurate detail, but also in the profusion of vegetation, some of it rather novel. Poppies, for example, were first made popular by Sotatsu’s followers (see the fourth panel from the right on the right screen). Newly imported plants such as maize appear in some “I’nen-seal screens.” Many artists and patrons shared an interest in the natural sciences in the seventeenth century. Fuelled by widely circulated copies of Chinese illustrated herbals and Dutch botanical studies, the Japanese at this time began to publish books on medicinal plants, to establish herbaria, to appreciate gardening and flower arranging. The vogue for botanical studies cut across class lines. Some daimyo, including Maeda Tsunanori (1643-1724) of Kaga province, who was himself an amateur botanist, had in their employ well-known botanists and assembled great libraries on the natural sciences. In Sotatsu, by Yukio Lippit and James T. Ulak (Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, 2015), Nishimoto Shuko points out that Li Shizhen’s compilation of texts on Chinese herbalism, Compendium of Materia Medica (Bencao gangmu), was circulating in Japan by 1604. There was a Japanese edition by 1637. The focus on natural history developed early in the Edo period.
In Sotatsu, cited above, Noguchi Takeshi describes the likely influence of grass-and-insect paintings from the Biliang region of China in Jiangsu Prefecture. He credits Tsuji Nobuo for being the first to point out that the decorative elements of the gold screens of the I’nen corpus likely derived from these fourteenth-century Chinese hanging scrolls of flowers, grasses, vegetables and insects – works possibly intended as dowry gifts. By the seventeenth century, Japanese patrons from the ranks of newly-rich merchants were open to new subjects and were not bound by convention.
Noguchi also notes that the cultural practice of floral arranging, known then as rikka (standing flowers) and today called ikebana, flourished in the early Edo period. In the 1630s, in the salon of the retired emperor Gomizuno’o, a circle that embraced grass-and-flower paintings by Sotatsu and his successor Sosetsu, there was a significant boom in rikka. Noguchi cites the commonality between the isolation of a few flowers in a bronze vessel and the isolation of flowers against a gold ground devoid of context in the I’nen paintings.
On the right screen are flowers and plants of spring and summer: first panel: wisteria; yamabuki or yellow Japanese roses (Kerria japonica); young pines; horsetails (Equisetum arvense); second and third panels: tree peonies (Paeonia suffruiticosa); dandelions (Taraxacum); fourth panel: pinks (Dianthus); opium poppies (Papavar somniferum); clematis species (Clematis); fifth panel: hydrangeas (Hydrangea macrophylla); hollyhocks (Alcea rosea); Japanese irises (Iris enseta spontanea); squash; rice (Oryza sativa); sixth panel: eggplants (Solanum melongena); water plantain (Sagittaria agineshi).
On the left screen are the flowers and grasses of autumn and winter: first and second panels: miscanthus grasses (susuki in Japanese) and bush clover (Lespedezas); yellow maidenflowers (Patrinia scabiosaefolia); thistle (Circium); bellflowers (Campanula); Chinese lantern plants (Physalis alkikengi) fifth and sixth panels: chrysanthemums; daffodil (Narcissus); Smilax; Shasta daisy (Chrysanthemum maximum); dwarf bamboo.
The use of an abstract gold ground, a subtle and rather complex composition of clusters of flowers arranged in artful bouquets, and the puddling of ink (especially noticeable here in the leaves) was initiated by Tawaraya Sotatsu, the founder of the Rimpa school, who was active from roughly 1600 until 1640. Painting ateliers led by Sotatsu’s followers continued through the end of the seventeenth century. On the whole, the identity of these followers remains a mystery; most did not sign their work but simply impressed one of Sotatsu’s seals – especially the round, vermilion-red relief seal reading I’nen that appears on the example shown here – on their paintings. Only two followers of Sotatsu, Tawaraya Sosetsu (active ca. 1640–50) and Kitagawa Sosetsu (active in the 1680s) are known by name. In 1642, Tawaraya Sosetsu became the official painter in-residence for the Maeda family, the daimyo of Kaga province (Ishikawa Prefecture) on the Japan Sea, north of Kyoto. A workshop was established in Kanazawa, the site of the Maeda castle. The screens illustrated here are likely to have come from one of the Sosetsu studios in the mid-seventeenth century.
These paintings share with other Sosetsu screens a loose progression from early spring on the far right side of the right screen with fern fronds and young pines, for example, to summer with iris and hollyhocks, followed by fall with chrysanthemums, and early winter with narcissus on the left screen. The inclusion of vegetables here – eggplants and squash – is rather unusual. As on other examples from the Sosetsu atelier, certain plants are paired or intertwined. Typically, such favourite pairings include wisteria and yellow roses on the far right of the right screen, miscanthus grasses and bush clover on the right side of the left screen, and narcissus and red berries at the far left. Typically, also, the artist composes in such a way that the top of the screen functions as an element of the composition: wisteria seems to be suspended from the frame on the right to form a canopy, as though hanging from a trellis. The artist rendered the structure of each motif with attention to detail. A balance of vivid colours and neutral tones enhances the realism of the imagery. Plants are depicted delicately without outline, in the so-called “boneless” manner. In places, the gold-leaf ground is visible through the thin wash of color. Stylistically, the screens belong to the same lineage as Flowers and Grasses of the Four Seasons of 1620–50 in the Asia Society, New York.
The screens are abstract and decorative in a way that is uniquely Japanese, but there is at the same time a keen sense of naturalism not only in the attention to accurate detail, but also in the profusion of vegetation, some of it rather novel. Poppies, for example, were first made popular by Sotatsu’s followers (see the fourth panel from the right on the right screen). Newly imported plants such as maize appear in some “I’nen-seal screens.” Many artists and patrons shared an interest in the natural sciences in the seventeenth century. Fuelled by widely circulated copies of Chinese illustrated herbals and Dutch botanical studies, the Japanese at this time began to publish books on medicinal plants, to establish herbaria, to appreciate gardening and flower arranging. The vogue for botanical studies cut across class lines. Some daimyo, including Maeda Tsunanori (1643-1724) of Kaga province, who was himself an amateur botanist, had in their employ well-known botanists and assembled great libraries on the natural sciences. In Sotatsu, by Yukio Lippit and James T. Ulak (Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, 2015), Nishimoto Shuko points out that Li Shizhen’s compilation of texts on Chinese herbalism, Compendium of Materia Medica (Bencao gangmu), was circulating in Japan by 1604. There was a Japanese edition by 1637. The focus on natural history developed early in the Edo period.
In Sotatsu, cited above, Noguchi Takeshi describes the likely influence of grass-and-insect paintings from the Biliang region of China in Jiangsu Prefecture. He credits Tsuji Nobuo for being the first to point out that the decorative elements of the gold screens of the I’nen corpus likely derived from these fourteenth-century Chinese hanging scrolls of flowers, grasses, vegetables and insects – works possibly intended as dowry gifts. By the seventeenth century, Japanese patrons from the ranks of newly-rich merchants were open to new subjects and were not bound by convention.
Noguchi also notes that the cultural practice of floral arranging, known then as rikka (standing flowers) and today called ikebana, flourished in the early Edo period. In the 1630s, in the salon of the retired emperor Gomizuno’o, a circle that embraced grass-and-flower paintings by Sotatsu and his successor Sosetsu, there was a significant boom in rikka. Noguchi cites the commonality between the isolation of a few flowers in a bronze vessel and the isolation of flowers against a gold ground devoid of context in the I’nen paintings.
On the right screen are flowers and plants of spring and summer: first panel: wisteria; yamabuki or yellow Japanese roses (Kerria japonica); young pines; horsetails (Equisetum arvense); second and third panels: tree peonies (Paeonia suffruiticosa); dandelions (Taraxacum); fourth panel: pinks (Dianthus); opium poppies (Papavar somniferum); clematis species (Clematis); fifth panel: hydrangeas (Hydrangea macrophylla); hollyhocks (Alcea rosea); Japanese irises (Iris enseta spontanea); squash; rice (Oryza sativa); sixth panel: eggplants (Solanum melongena); water plantain (Sagittaria agineshi).
On the left screen are the flowers and grasses of autumn and winter: first and second panels: miscanthus grasses (susuki in Japanese) and bush clover (Lespedezas); yellow maidenflowers (Patrinia scabiosaefolia); thistle (Circium); bellflowers (Campanula); Chinese lantern plants (Physalis alkikengi) fifth and sixth panels: chrysanthemums; daffodil (Narcissus); Smilax; Shasta daisy (Chrysanthemum maximum); dwarf bamboo.