Sotatsu School (17th Century)
- Chrysanthemums

Chrysanthemums

(Set Currency)

$80,000 - $100,000

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Sale 2338
Japanese & Korean Art Including Arts of the Meiji Period
15 September 2010
New York, Rockefeller Plaza Buy Catalog

Sotatsu School (17th Century)
Chrysanthemums
Each sealed Inen
Pair of six-panel screens; ink, color and gold on paper
58 1/8 x 135 7/8in. (147.5 x 344.4cm.) each approx. (2)

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Anonymous temple, Takaoka
Sairenji Temple, Takaoka
The Manno Art Museum, Osaka

Mizuo Hiroshi, Gunkikuzu byobu (Screen with clusters of chrysanthemums), Kokka 962 (1973): 35--37, color plates pp. 30--31.

Suntory Museum of Art, ed., Kaikan yonjusshunen kinen tokubetsu kikaku--Manno korekushon no meihin ikkyo kokai: Rinpa to chadogu Special Exhibition Commemorating the Museum's 40th Anniversary--Masterpieces from the Manno Collection: Rimpa and Tea Ceremony Utensils (Tokyo: Suntory Museum of Art, 2001), pl. 9.

Suntory Museum of Art, "Kaikan yonjusshunen kinen tokubetsu kikaku--Manno korekushon no meihin ikkyo kokai: Rinpa to chadogu Special Exhibition Commemorating the Museum's 40th Anniversary--Masterpieces from the Manno Collection: Rimpa and Tea Ceremony Utensils," 2001.4.17--6.3

Seven large clusters of white chrysanthmums are rhythmically arrayed across a pair of screens; they are evenly divided between left and right, connecting at the center. Although the painting suffers from the wear and tear of age, the beauty of the graceful flowers remains seductive. The white heads of the flowers are built up with a layer of powdered oyster shell (gofun). For variety, other colors are introduced--orange, yellow, red and pink chrysanthemums mingle with the white. Below, much smaller clusters dot the foreground at regular intervals, as in a nobleman's garden of grand scale. The composition closes at the far left of the left screen with the largest white cluster pushing dramatically up and out of the frame.

The "Inen" seal, used by followers of Tawaraya Sotatsu (act. 1602--40) working in Kyoto and Kanazawa, appears on dozens of screens of flowers dating from the mid-seventeenth century. These innovative compositions reflect a craze for botany and gardening that extended from the upper echelons of the military elite to all levels of society. The flowers are carefully rendered with attention to detail. In some of the leaves, the artist skillfully employed the tarashikomi technique, with drips of color added to still-wet pigment for a puddled effect. Working in the "boneless" style, without outlines, he painted the leaves in various shades of green, employing gold pigment for the veins.

Many screens of this type are still located in and around Kanazawa, in Ishikawa and Toyama Prefectures, the former Kaga domain of the daimyo Maeda Tsunanori (1643-1742). Tsunanori's interest in botany spurred on the Sotatsu-school workshop in Kanazawa, headed first by Sotatsu's direct follower Tawaraya Sosetsu and then by Kitagawa Sosetsu. There is not much information about the followers of Sotatsu working in Kyoto.

The collection of the Manno Art Museum, Osaka, was dispersed a few years ago owing to a downturn in the economy.

• Japanese Art

• 17th Century
• Paintings
• ink
• Japan
• Edo (1600-1868)
• flowers & plants

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