KEISUI: A FINE TWO-PANEL ‘FLOWERS OF THE FOUR SEASONS’ BYOBU (FOLDING SCREEN)

拍品描述

KEISUI: A FINE TWO-PANEL ‘FLOWERS OF THE FOUR SEASONS’ BYOBU (FOLDING SCREEN) By Ito Keisui (1878-1967), signed Keisui saku and sealed Keisui Japan, first half of the 20th century Ink, watercolors, gouache, and gold foil on paper. Mounted on brocade on two black lacquered wood panels. Finely painted in vibrant colors to depict cherry, narcissus, peonies, plumed cockscomb, chrysanthemums, dandelions, prunus, nandina, thistle, iris, maple, and other seasonal flowers against a golden ground. Inscriptions: To the upper right corner, signed Keisui saku 渓水作 [made by Keisui] with seal mark Keisui, 渓水. SIZE 183.3 x 63.5 cm Ito Keisui, born in Aichi Prefecture, was the student of Hirai Chokusui and Yamamoto Shunkyo, and active in the Teiten and Bunten exhibitions. This screen belongs to a genre of lyrical paintings of flowers, grasses, and other plants that derives from the seventeenth century paintings of the Sotatsu studio. In Sotatsu, Noguchi Takeshi 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. Auction comparison: Compare a related Rinpa School six-panel screen with flowers of the four seasons, dated 18th century, 106.8 x 337 cm, at Christie’s, Japanese and Korean Art, 18 September 2007, New York, lot 117 (sold for USD 11,250 or approx. EUR 15,000 converted and adjusted for inflation at the time of writing).

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