Product Description

6864 A six-fold paper screen painted in ink and colour on a gold ground with fan-shaped roundels containing kachōga (paintings of birds and flowers) and landscapes. From right to left, the roundels display a weeping willow on a riverbank, an akauso (bullfinch) perched on the branch of a sakura (cherry blossom) tree with bamboo leaves behind, a rocky river landscape with a pavilion and waterfall, and red and white tosaka (cockscomb).

The screen features an unusual painted border with stencilled sakura designs, and a black inner border featuring gold mon (family crests) rendered in moriage (raised design). The design of these mon closely resembles that of the Hisamatsu family, who were a branch of the Matsudaira clan descended from the brother of Ieyasu, and who resided in the Tako domain of Shimōsa province, Kantō region from 1661.

Japan 17th century Edo period

Dimensions: H. 40¼” x W. 142¾” (102cm x 362cm)

For similar screens featuring paintings in fan-shaped roundels, see:

A two-fold screen by Soga Nichokuan ‘Ancient, and Hawk on an Oak Tree’, in Bridge of Dreams: The Mary Griggs Burke Collection of Japanese Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000, p.251.

A pair of six-fold screens by Tōshun, ‘Flowers, Birds and Figures’, in Screen Paintings of the Muromachi Period, Tokyo National Museum, Kokka Magazine and Asahi Newspaper, 1989, pl.64, p.164.

A pair of six-fold screens ‘Arrowroot Vines with Twelve Fan Paintings of Flowers and Birds and Twelve Shikishi of Calligraphy’, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Published in Biombo: Japan Heritage as Legend of Gold, Nikkei, Inc., 2007, pl.19, p.82.