Preamble
For your convenience I have listed other posts on Japanese textiles on this blogspot:
Discharge Thundercloud
The Basic Kimono Pattern
The Kimono and Japanese Textile Designs
Traditional Japanese Arabesque Patterns (Part I)
Textile Dyeing Patterns of Japan
Traditional Japanese Arabesque Patterns (Part II)
Sarasa Arabesque Patterns (Part III)
Contemporary Japanese Textile Creations
Shibori (Tie-Dying)
History of the Kimono
A Textile Tour of Japan - Part I
A Textile Tour of Japan - Part II
The History of the Obi
Japanese Embroidery (Shishu)
Japanese Dyed Textiles
Aizome (Japanese Indigo Dyeing)
Stencil-Dyed Indigo Arabesque Patterns (Part V)
Japanese Paintings on Silk
Tsutsugaki - Freehand Paste-Resist Dyeing
Street Play in Tokyo
Birds and Flowers in Japanese Textile Designs
Japanese Colors and Inks on Paper From the Idemitsu Collection
Yuzen: Multicolored Past-Resist Dyeing - Part 1
Yuzen: Multi-colored Paste-Resist Dyeing - Part II
Introduction
The Idemitsu Museum of Arts was established by the late Sazo Idemitsu in 1966 in order to exhibit collections of Asian art that had been assembled during the previous half century by Sazo Idemitsu, founder of Idemitsu Kosan Co. Ltd.
Idemitsu Museum of Arts.
The Japanese silk paintings selected in this post were exhibited at the major art galleries in Queensland, NSW, South Australia, Western Australia and Victoria in 1982-1983. Japanese arts began in the Jōmon period (the Japanese neolithic cultural period extending from about 8,000 BC to 200 BC). In ancient times and through the Middle Ages, Japan introduced and subsequently assimilated art/culture initially from China and Korea and even as far away as Persia. In modern times, Japanese art/culture has accepted and then assimilated Western European culture in a unique fashion.
Japanese Paintings on Silk (from the Idemitsu Collection)[1]
Title: A Beauty.
Artist: Miyagawa Chōshun (1683-1753).
Kakemono: A Japanese unframed painting made on paper or silk and displayed as a wall hanging.
Colors on Silk.
Size: 88 x 33 cm.
Comment[1]: Chōshun designed no prints and produced only ukiyo-e paintings (i.e. literally 'pictures of a floating world': an Edo (1615 to 1868) school of painting concerned with the depiction of popular life). The pose of the woman is a standard one in the bijin-ga repertoire (a generic term for pictures of beautiful women in Japanese art): the girl walking with one foot coming forward, her head turned to look back over her shoulder, one hand holding her kimono at the waist.
Title: Beauties Admiring Paintings.
Artist: Katsukawa Shunshō (1726-1792).
Kakemono.
Colors on Silk.
Size: 70 x 123 cm.
Comment[1]: This painting is a masterpiece of Shunshō in which the artist has combined the fashionable taste for bijin-ga within a meticulously depicted landscape and garden setting. Eleven women are shown: with the exception of the two young girls who are dressed similarly in kimonos of a cherry blossom-on-red background pattern, each woman is carefully and skilfully painted in a different pose and kimono. Their complicated hairstyles were achieved by the use of binzashi: objects made of bone or metal that held their hair out flat on either side of the face.
Title: A Beauty Having A Smoke.
Artist: Utagawa Toyokuni (1769-1825).
Kakemono.
Colors on Silk.
Size: 101.5 x 36.0 cm.
Comment[1]: This is an informal portrait of a beauty having a smoke after washing her hair, with only her head and shoulders shown, a popular format since the late 18th century. The cotton printed cloth around her shoulders and the thin material of her outer garment show the incorporation of late 18th century fashion into this painting. Smoking was a fashionable pastime among the sophisticated demimonde of Edo and the woman is holding a typical Edo pipe with its long stem and very small bowl that permitted only a few puffs. Tobacco smoking had been introduced from Europe through the namban traders and then quickly adopted by fashionable society.
Title: Landscape Of Spring And Autumn.
Artist: Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849).
Pair of Kakemono.
Colors on Silk.
Each Size: 70.2 x 27.3 cm.
Comment[1]: Hokusai is one of the world's great draftsman, immortalised through his sets of landscape prints of which 'Thirty Six Views of Mount Fuji' is the masterpiece. He was a prodigious creator of prints, drawings and paintings - he is thought to have produced over 30,000 designs. Together with Hiroshige, he revitalised ukiyo-e in the early 19th century when the tradition was dying due to lack of new themes.
In this pair of scrolls, spring is on the right, with the back view of the man energetically polling his boat and cherry blossom above. The autumn scene is on the left, it depicts three travellers talking together as they pause on their way through the autumn mountains, whose high peeks and deep ravines show the influence of Western techniques. Both scrolls have the feeling of a moment caught in time and both are infused with an airy, genial atmosphere through the harmony of the composition and the color scheme.
Title: Two Beauties In The Wind.
Artist: Teisai Hokuba (1771-1844).
Kakemono.
Colors on Silk.
Size: 95.0 x 34.6 cm.
Comment[1]: Two women bend into a fierce wind as they endeavour to progress in the face of a storm. One is trying to open her umbrella while the other looks around in alarm at the sudden change of weather. Light snow is falling and the wind is tossing the pine tree on the left and playing havoc with the women's kimonos. The Sumida River behind them is rough and rain has come with the snow. In the background can be seen buildings, including a five storied pagoda.
Title: Drooping Cherry Tree And Bush Clover.
Artist: Sakai Hōitsu (1761-1828).
Pair of Kakemono.
Colors on Silk.
Each Size: 108.6 x 39.7 cm.
Comment[1]: These scrolls are a distillation of Japanese aesthetics. They depict cherry blossoms and bush clover naturalistically rendered. As the symbols of spring and autumn respectively, they evoke the beauty of those seasons and the inevitable transition of time. The realisation of the short duration of such fragile beauty tinges our appreciation with a poignant sadness that is at the heart of Japanese aesthetics. The flowers are there, perfectly placed, with no extraneous background to distract. The composition is harmoniously balanced and since each flower grows in from the outer edge of the scroll the composition is unified. Each branch bears a poem written in Japanese script and the combination of literature, art and nature make this a superb statement of Japanese sensibility. The poem on the right is written on a long, narrow, paper strip termed tanzaku; that on the left is written on a decorative heavy paper square termed a shikishi. Both of these are standard shapes for poems in Japan and from the Momoyama period (1568 to 1615) to the present day. The shape of each format compliments the shape and tenor of their respective plants. The poems refer to the moving effect that a drooping cherry tree or white bush clover in the moonlight has upon an onlooker of the scene that is depicted.
Reference:
[1] J. Menzies and E. Capon, Japan: Masterpieces from the Idemitsu Collection, International Cultural Corporation of Australia Limited, Sydney (1982).
For your convenience I have listed other posts on Japanese textiles on this blogspot:
Discharge Thundercloud
The Basic Kimono Pattern
The Kimono and Japanese Textile Designs
Traditional Japanese Arabesque Patterns (Part I)
Textile Dyeing Patterns of Japan
Traditional Japanese Arabesque Patterns (Part II)
Sarasa Arabesque Patterns (Part III)
Contemporary Japanese Textile Creations
Shibori (Tie-Dying)
History of the Kimono
A Textile Tour of Japan - Part I
A Textile Tour of Japan - Part II
The History of the Obi
Japanese Embroidery (Shishu)
Japanese Dyed Textiles
Aizome (Japanese Indigo Dyeing)
Stencil-Dyed Indigo Arabesque Patterns (Part V)
Japanese Paintings on Silk
Tsutsugaki - Freehand Paste-Resist Dyeing
Street Play in Tokyo
Birds and Flowers in Japanese Textile Designs
Japanese Colors and Inks on Paper From the Idemitsu Collection
Yuzen: Multicolored Past-Resist Dyeing - Part 1
Yuzen: Multi-colored Paste-Resist Dyeing - Part II
Introduction
The Idemitsu Museum of Arts was established by the late Sazo Idemitsu in 1966 in order to exhibit collections of Asian art that had been assembled during the previous half century by Sazo Idemitsu, founder of Idemitsu Kosan Co. Ltd.
The Japanese silk paintings selected in this post were exhibited at the major art galleries in Queensland, NSW, South Australia, Western Australia and Victoria in 1982-1983. Japanese arts began in the Jōmon period (the Japanese neolithic cultural period extending from about 8,000 BC to 200 BC). In ancient times and through the Middle Ages, Japan introduced and subsequently assimilated art/culture initially from China and Korea and even as far away as Persia. In modern times, Japanese art/culture has accepted and then assimilated Western European culture in a unique fashion.
Japanese Paintings on Silk (from the Idemitsu Collection)[1]
Artist: Miyagawa Chōshun (1683-1753).
Kakemono: A Japanese unframed painting made on paper or silk and displayed as a wall hanging.
Colors on Silk.
Size: 88 x 33 cm.
Comment[1]: Chōshun designed no prints and produced only ukiyo-e paintings (i.e. literally 'pictures of a floating world': an Edo (1615 to 1868) school of painting concerned with the depiction of popular life). The pose of the woman is a standard one in the bijin-ga repertoire (a generic term for pictures of beautiful women in Japanese art): the girl walking with one foot coming forward, her head turned to look back over her shoulder, one hand holding her kimono at the waist.
Artist: Katsukawa Shunshō (1726-1792).
Kakemono.
Colors on Silk.
Size: 70 x 123 cm.
Comment[1]: This painting is a masterpiece of Shunshō in which the artist has combined the fashionable taste for bijin-ga within a meticulously depicted landscape and garden setting. Eleven women are shown: with the exception of the two young girls who are dressed similarly in kimonos of a cherry blossom-on-red background pattern, each woman is carefully and skilfully painted in a different pose and kimono. Their complicated hairstyles were achieved by the use of binzashi: objects made of bone or metal that held their hair out flat on either side of the face.
Artist: Utagawa Toyokuni (1769-1825).
Kakemono.
Colors on Silk.
Size: 101.5 x 36.0 cm.
Comment[1]: This is an informal portrait of a beauty having a smoke after washing her hair, with only her head and shoulders shown, a popular format since the late 18th century. The cotton printed cloth around her shoulders and the thin material of her outer garment show the incorporation of late 18th century fashion into this painting. Smoking was a fashionable pastime among the sophisticated demimonde of Edo and the woman is holding a typical Edo pipe with its long stem and very small bowl that permitted only a few puffs. Tobacco smoking had been introduced from Europe through the namban traders and then quickly adopted by fashionable society.
Artist: Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849).
Pair of Kakemono.
Colors on Silk.
Each Size: 70.2 x 27.3 cm.
Comment[1]: Hokusai is one of the world's great draftsman, immortalised through his sets of landscape prints of which 'Thirty Six Views of Mount Fuji' is the masterpiece. He was a prodigious creator of prints, drawings and paintings - he is thought to have produced over 30,000 designs. Together with Hiroshige, he revitalised ukiyo-e in the early 19th century when the tradition was dying due to lack of new themes.
In this pair of scrolls, spring is on the right, with the back view of the man energetically polling his boat and cherry blossom above. The autumn scene is on the left, it depicts three travellers talking together as they pause on their way through the autumn mountains, whose high peeks and deep ravines show the influence of Western techniques. Both scrolls have the feeling of a moment caught in time and both are infused with an airy, genial atmosphere through the harmony of the composition and the color scheme.
Artist: Teisai Hokuba (1771-1844).
Kakemono.
Colors on Silk.
Size: 95.0 x 34.6 cm.
Comment[1]: Two women bend into a fierce wind as they endeavour to progress in the face of a storm. One is trying to open her umbrella while the other looks around in alarm at the sudden change of weather. Light snow is falling and the wind is tossing the pine tree on the left and playing havoc with the women's kimonos. The Sumida River behind them is rough and rain has come with the snow. In the background can be seen buildings, including a five storied pagoda.
Artist: Sakai Hōitsu (1761-1828).
Pair of Kakemono.
Colors on Silk.
Each Size: 108.6 x 39.7 cm.
Comment[1]: These scrolls are a distillation of Japanese aesthetics. They depict cherry blossoms and bush clover naturalistically rendered. As the symbols of spring and autumn respectively, they evoke the beauty of those seasons and the inevitable transition of time. The realisation of the short duration of such fragile beauty tinges our appreciation with a poignant sadness that is at the heart of Japanese aesthetics. The flowers are there, perfectly placed, with no extraneous background to distract. The composition is harmoniously balanced and since each flower grows in from the outer edge of the scroll the composition is unified. Each branch bears a poem written in Japanese script and the combination of literature, art and nature make this a superb statement of Japanese sensibility. The poem on the right is written on a long, narrow, paper strip termed tanzaku; that on the left is written on a decorative heavy paper square termed a shikishi. Both of these are standard shapes for poems in Japan and from the Momoyama period (1568 to 1615) to the present day. The shape of each format compliments the shape and tenor of their respective plants. The poems refer to the moving effect that a drooping cherry tree or white bush clover in the moonlight has upon an onlooker of the scene that is depicted.
Reference:
[1] J. Menzies and E. Capon, Japan: Masterpieces from the Idemitsu Collection, International Cultural Corporation of Australia Limited, Sydney (1982).
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