Flowers and Grasses
1604
unspecified
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
About the artist
1604
unspecified
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
Flowers and Grasses is a 1604 unspecified by Kitagawa Sōsetsu, a Baroque work, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
You see a tall folding screen covered in ink-and-color flowers and grasses swaying in an empty gold field. The screen was made to stand behind a ruler’s chair, so the plants feel like a private garden you’re allowed to peek at. Each stem is drawn with a single brushstroke—no sketch underneath—so the artist had to trust his hand completely. Look up *Japan, Edo period (1615–1868)* to see more screens that turned rooms into quiet gardens.
Kitagawa Sōsetsu painted for the Maeda family, powerful rulers of what is present-day Ishikawa Prefecture on the central northern coast of Honshū, Japan’s main island. Screens served as room dividers and backdrops in Maeda grand residences. This composition is considered one of the artist’s masterpieces. Kitagawa Sōsetsu is thought to have been a student of Tawaraya Sōsetsu, who was in turn the student of Tawaraya Sōtatsu the Kyoto-based master painter regarded as the creator of the style that came to be known as Rinpa. By selecting a painter of this lineage, the Maeda family consciously…
Read the full account in the museum source.
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