Inoue Hakuyō
Late Summer, 1920s
Pair of two-panel folding screens; mineral pigments, shell powder, ink and gold on hemp
Size each screen 67 x 74¼ in. (170 x 188.5 cm)
T-4749
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The right-hand screen signed and sealed at lower right Hakuyō; the left-hand screen sealed at lower left Hakuyō. This visually arresting pair of screens melds two strands in the subject...
The right-hand screen signed and sealed at lower right Hakuyō; the left-hand screen sealed at lower left Hakuyō.
This visually arresting pair of screens melds two strands in the subject manner of Japanese Nihonga painting of the early 20th century: a focus on plants—both traditional Japanese species and recent imports—and pictures of beautiful women. During the early decades of the official Bunten and Teiten exhibitions one increasingly encounters plant forms depicted in a dramatic, close-up manner such as seen here. Now and again, artists at this period who had trained in the newly fashionable genre of bijinga —pictures of beautiful women in elegant settings, typically surrounded by fashionable luxuries—sometimes transferred their skills to depict country women in rural settings, using rich mineral pigments to convey contrasting natural and man-made colors and textures.
The plants shown here, all cultivated varieties, are: tōmorokoshi (maize or sweetcorn), introduced to Japan toward the end of the sixteenth century; tachiaoi (hollyhocks), a perennial favorite of Japanese artists but represented here by particularly delicate and brightly colored cultivars; and uri (melons), pampered and prized in Japan for their sweetness and delicate flesh. Dragonflies flying overhead complete the natural components of the scene.
The peasant women in the left-hand screen wears a cotton kasuri skirt, patterned with threads dyed prior to weaving; an indigo-dyed jacket, straw sandals, a cotton sash, and a cotton headcloth to protect herself from the intense late-summer heat, as she bends down to pick either a corn cob or a melon, her face unseen. The artist’s approach is both decorative and naturalistic: the complex pattern formed by the leaves of the maize create an almost abstract effect, but details such as the worm-eaten holes in the melon leaves remind that this rural scene is based in reality. In keeping with the screens’ roots in the Rinpa style of decorative painting that first appeared in the seventeenth century and re-emerged in the early nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the two melons—one only partially visible—are depicted using the tarashikomi technique in which a second layer of paint is applied over the first before it has had time to dry, creating a mottled, puddled effect.
Born in Tokyo, Inoue Hakuyō attended Tokyo Art School, studied under Kajita Hanko (1870–1917), and was selected for the Fifth Nihon Bijutsuin Ten (Inten, 1915) even before he graduated; after winning several prizes at successive Inten, in 1926 he showed at the large and prestigious Shōtoku Taishi Commemorative Exhibition, then regularly at the Teiten national salon and its successors from 1930 until 1953.
This visually arresting pair of screens melds two strands in the subject manner of Japanese Nihonga painting of the early 20th century: a focus on plants—both traditional Japanese species and recent imports—and pictures of beautiful women. During the early decades of the official Bunten and Teiten exhibitions one increasingly encounters plant forms depicted in a dramatic, close-up manner such as seen here. Now and again, artists at this period who had trained in the newly fashionable genre of bijinga —pictures of beautiful women in elegant settings, typically surrounded by fashionable luxuries—sometimes transferred their skills to depict country women in rural settings, using rich mineral pigments to convey contrasting natural and man-made colors and textures.
The plants shown here, all cultivated varieties, are: tōmorokoshi (maize or sweetcorn), introduced to Japan toward the end of the sixteenth century; tachiaoi (hollyhocks), a perennial favorite of Japanese artists but represented here by particularly delicate and brightly colored cultivars; and uri (melons), pampered and prized in Japan for their sweetness and delicate flesh. Dragonflies flying overhead complete the natural components of the scene.
The peasant women in the left-hand screen wears a cotton kasuri skirt, patterned with threads dyed prior to weaving; an indigo-dyed jacket, straw sandals, a cotton sash, and a cotton headcloth to protect herself from the intense late-summer heat, as she bends down to pick either a corn cob or a melon, her face unseen. The artist’s approach is both decorative and naturalistic: the complex pattern formed by the leaves of the maize create an almost abstract effect, but details such as the worm-eaten holes in the melon leaves remind that this rural scene is based in reality. In keeping with the screens’ roots in the Rinpa style of decorative painting that first appeared in the seventeenth century and re-emerged in the early nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the two melons—one only partially visible—are depicted using the tarashikomi technique in which a second layer of paint is applied over the first before it has had time to dry, creating a mottled, puddled effect.
Born in Tokyo, Inoue Hakuyō attended Tokyo Art School, studied under Kajita Hanko (1870–1917), and was selected for the Fifth Nihon Bijutsuin Ten (Inten, 1915) even before he graduated; after winning several prizes at successive Inten, in 1926 he showed at the large and prestigious Shōtoku Taishi Commemorative Exhibition, then regularly at the Teiten national salon and its successors from 1930 until 1953.