Grasses and flowers of four seasons

This magnificent pair of screens belongs to a genre of lyrical paintings of flowers, grasses, and other plants that flourished originally around the middle of the seventeenth century and became a popular specialty of the Sotatsu studio. The subject is an imaginary garden in which flowers of all four seasons are in bloom. Overflowing with vitality and dazzling against an all-gold ground, this lush profusion of natural beauty is dense with plants for spring and summer on the right screen, more open for autumn and winter on the left.
The use of an abstract gold ground, a subtle and rather complex composition of clusters of flowers arranged in artful bouquets was initiated by Tawaraya Sotatsu, the founder of the Rimpa school. Almost nothing is known about Sotatsu, not even his life dates, but he and his Tawaraya workshop in Kyoto used the circular red I’nen seal and specialized in large-scale, showy screens of flowers and grasses. Close observation on this pair of screens reveals the meticulous, convincing depiction of each plant. The artist used ink wash to convey shading without use of outlines, the so-called “boneless” method which was one of the characteristics of Sotatsu and Rimpa school.