Artworks

Matsushima screens

Artwork · Tawara Sōtatsu · 17th century · byōbu · Freer Gallery of Art

One of Tawara Sōtatsu’s masterworks: a richly coloured rocky outcrop in raging white-capped water, a golden cloud and pine-capped rocks, gold clouds turning into island shores. Called after Matsushima near Sendai, one of the three most beautiful views of Japan, the screens may rather show the Wedded Rocks of Futamigaura near Ise and illustrate the poem of a banished courtier in the Tales of Ise gazing at the foaming surf — the loneliness of the exile in the distorted reality of the landscape. 1 Mason 2005, pp. 269–271, fig. 311. ↩ Literatur Mason 2005: Penelope E. Mason, History of Japanese Art, 2nd, Pearson Education LTD. 2005.