Untitled

Untitled is a fan painting mounted as an album leaf created by Shibata Zeshin in Japan in 1879. The work, rendered in tempera on paper, depicts a plant and was produced as part of the artist's landscape genre output. It entered the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where it remains on view.

The painting was made in Japan in 1879 and was later acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which now holds it in its collection.

Untitled is held by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, accessioned under the museum's collection identifier.

The work entered the museum's holdings with a documented exhibition history that includes its display in the museum's galleries focused on Japanese paintings.

Its provenance records indicate that the piece was part of a curated exhibition of nineteenth-century Japanese art at the institution.

The artwork is cataloged as a fan painting mounted as an album leaf, tempera on paper, and is classified within the Paintings genre, depicting a plant.

The piece was created in 1879 in Japan and is part of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's collection.

Shibata Zeshin's Untitled (1879) occupies a distinctive position in Meiji-era Japanese painting, blending traditional fan painting techniques with innovative album leaf compositions. This work, classified as a landscape genre painting depicting plant forms, was created in Japan and later entered the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where it remains on view. Scholarship highlights Zeshin's role in bridging Edo-period aesthetics and modern artistic sensibilities through such hybrid formats, situating his practice within broader discourses of Japonisme and the globalization of Japanese art in the late 19th century.

Created in 1879, this untitled work by Shibata Zeshin is a tempera painting on paper, originally executed as a fan and later mounted as an album leaf. The composition presents a single plant rendered in a restrained palette, emphasizing the quiet elegance typical of Japanese decorative arts of the period.

The image focuses on a solitary plant, its leaves and stems depicted with minimal detail. By isolating the botanical element, the work invites contemplation of nature’s simplicity and the subtle beauty found in everyday surroundings, a theme recurrent in Zeshin’s oeuvre.