Artworks

Maple Tree

Artwork · Hasegawa Tōhaku · c. 1592 · fusuma-e · Chishaku-in Temple

Tōhaku’s masterwork in the blue-and-gold style and one of the first reworkings of yamato-e themes: painted for Shōunji, the temple Toyotomi Hideyoshi built in 1592 for his three-year-old son Tsurumatsu, after Tōhaku was put in sole charge; when the temple was destroyed after 1615 the surviving paintings went to Chishaku-in Temple and were cut down. A massive maple trunk runs diagonally across the two central panels, its branches like arms; chrysanthemums, cockscomb and bush clover form a base; the gold is at one moment ground, at another cloud over blue water — tension between the enduring trunk and the leaves that will soon fall. 1 Mason 2005, pp. 261–262, fig. 301. ↩ Literatur Mason 2005: Penelope E. Mason, History of Japanese Art, 2nd, Pearson Education LTD. 2005.