Page 307 - Edo: Art in Japan, 1615–1868
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162 • This bold yet delicately detailed pampas grass, and bellflower. The
Watanabe Shikô (1683-1755) pair of screens reveals Watanabe plants are rendered with a compel-
Flowers and Trees of the Four Seasons Shikó's simultaneous mastery of ele- ling delicacy and accuracy of detail,
Pair of six-panel screens; gant design — the heritage of his although there are disquieting,
perhaps intentional, discrepancies in
ink, color, and gold on paper Rinpa training — and the botanical
Each 155 x 389.5 (61 x 145) naturalism beginning to awaken dur- scale between the huge peony and
Private Collection, Kanagawa ing the eighteenth century. Although the diminutive iris. There also exists
the theme of Flowers and Trees of an innate tension between the nat-
the Four Seasons might lend itself to uralism of the floral subjects, whose
hackneyed reproduction after nearly selection suggests the progression
a thousand years of repetition, Shikó's of time, and their juxtaposition in
vision is thoroughly fresh and en- a continuous composition. The oper-
gaging. Playing off against bold, ation of time is thus erased entirely,
sumptuously textured ground and as the flowers and trees enter
cloud patterns created from combi- one seamless, timeless world. MT
nations of gold leaf, gold grains, and
torn gold and silver flecks, the sea-
sonal flowers progress from right to
left across the two screens — wisteria,
peony, coxcomb, iris, lily, lespedeza,
