Flowers of the Four Seasons (one of a pair with F1997.31.1a-b)

Object Details

• Artist

  Izuhara Makoku (1777-1860)

• Label

  Makoku, a Buddhist monk, was the least known member of a triumvirate of Nagoya-born painters; the other two were Yamamoto Baiitsu (1783-1856) and Nakabayashi Chikuto (1776-1853), who in the early nineteenth century advanced a painting style that melded Chinese Ming (1368-1644) and Qing (1644-1911) dynasty styles with Japanese sensibilities. Both Baiitsu and Chikuto achieved considerable prominence in the highly competitive cultural milieu of Kyoto. Makoku, while fully engaged in a range of cultural activities, seems to have a more reserved, less commercially directed life than his colleagues.

  Makoku proposes a naturalistic but highly unlikely arrangement of plants that represent the four seasons. A centuries-old painting practice for this kind of arrangement called for placement of representative flowers sequentially in clearly demarcated compositional space. Makoku follows an Edo-period (1615-1868) trend of blending flowers and grasses in a naturalistic rather than schematic mode and, further, uses the opportunity to depict less well-known flowers.

  See also F1997.31.1a-b

• Collection

  Freer Gallery of Art Collection

• Exhibition History

  The Arts of Japan (July 14, 2012 to January 13, 2013)

  More Than Flowers: Sources of Tradition in Japanese Painting (September 2, 2001 to November 24, 2002)

• Origin

  Japan

• Credit Line

  Gift of Andreas Leisinger

• Type

  Painting

• Restrictions and Rights

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  collections.si.edu

• Date

  1700s, 1710s, 1720s, 1770s, 1780s, 1790s, 1730s, 1740s, 1750s, 1760s, 1800s, 1810s, 1820s, 1830s, 1610s, 1650s, 1640s, 1630s, 1620s, 1690s, 1840s, 1850s, 1680s, 1670s, 1860s, 1660s

• Name

  Izuhara, Makoku

• Place

  Japan

• Topic

  Art, Edo period, Japan, (1600 - 1868), Japanese Art, Flowers, Kakemono

• Culture

  Japanese

• Object Type

  Paintings