Artworks

Hikone screen

Artwork · Anonymous · 1624–1644 · byōbu · Hikone Castle Museum

A single six-panel screen of figures on gold: a house of courtesans in the entertainment district. On the right two panels two courtesans and a child attendant talk with a samurai leaning on his sword; inside, groups of men and women play the samisen, a board game, read and write — a contemporary version of the Chinese theme of the Four Accomplishments. A monochrome landscape screen in the Kanō manner behind the blind musician, the subdued colours and controlled brushwork suggest a painter trained in the Kanō atelier. Perhaps the last of the great genre paintings in the Momoyama tradition, from the collection of the Ii family of Hikone. 1 Mason 2005, pp. 247–249, fig. 283. ↩ Literatur Mason 2005: Penelope E. Mason, History of Japanese Art, 2nd, Pearson Education LTD. 2005.