Page 345 - Edo: Art in Japan, 1615–1868

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196 • These screens are unique in tree "anchors" the right side of the
Itó Jakuchü (1716 -1800) Jakuchu's oeuvre and confront the right screen, while the fence's low-
Stone Lanterns viewer with something other than the pitched diagonal establishes visual
Pair of six-panel screens; ink and thematic and sensual immediacy of weight in the left screen. This contra-
gold on paper the artist's better-known flower-and- posing of right and left halves of the
painting reinforces the sense of space
5
Each 159.1 x 360.8 (62 /s x 142) bird paintings (see cats. 194,195). in the middleground and endows the
Agency for Cultural Affairs, Tokyo Abandoning his characteristically col-
orful palette for sober black and gray image with compositional stability.
ink tonalities, Jakuchü here presents The subject of the painting is an
ten stone lanterns that apparently enigma. Is this simply an image of
line a fenced wooded path. Across a lanterns, a play of varied ink ton-
void obscured by mists of gold wash, alities, or is there more significance?
a line of gently sloping low moun- Stone lanterns such as these line
tains stretches wavelike across the
entire background. Compositionally,
the two screens seem to respond to
each another: an outstretched pine