Peacocks and Bamboo
Tosa Mitsuyoshi (attributed)
The immense heraldic birds on display in these byøbu reflect the Momoyama era's spirit of newly gained self-confidence and an affinity for grand expressive statements in painting, architecture, the textile and ceramic arts, as well as garden design. While that period preceded the arrival of prosperity, it clearly marked an extra---ordinary moment in Japanese cultural history, one frequently compared with the twelfth century of the Heian period. Through the extensive use of gold-foil backgrounds rather than the somber palette of carefully orchestrated ink tones evident in Muromachi byøbu, patrons colla-borated with artists as well as craftsmen in fostering a decidedly new look in much of Japanese painting. Here for instance there is no imaginary vista suggesting China's vast waterways and mountain ranges. The setting is composed instead of highly stylized lozenges of mineral green paint, suggesting the earth from which clumps of grass, flowering plants, and towering bamboo and paulownia trees emerge. Clusters of lumpy, blue-green rocks dotted with lichen provide stabilizing three-dimensional foils for these islands of vegetation as well as the all-encompassing flat, golden surface. The glorious artificiality of the setting precisely serves the artist's effort to compose a credible yet other-worldly vista for depicting the legendary phoenix gazing across the landscape at the pair of peacocks. Rather than an emblem of immortality, as it is in Western lore, in Japan the phoenix evolved out of its origins in Chinese mythology to become, by the sixteenth century, an auspicious symbol of political authority. Together with clusters of the distinctively shaped paulownia leaves, this long-tailed, mythical bird graced lacquerware as well as mural paintings, proclaiming an air of graceful com-mand. A characteristic infusion of temporality has been included also, through a seasonal flowering schema extending from spring to early summer (right) to fall and the advent of winter (left). Although traditionally attributed to the Tosa school master Tosa Mitsuyoshi (1539-1613), these byøbu possess neither seals nor signatures to confirm that authorship. Known for his jewel-like, modest-sized album paintings of courtly narratives such as The Tale of Genji, it is likely both studio training and contemporary fashions in patronage conspired to produce a good number of such byøbu. This example from the Momoyama era represents one such effort from a masterful Tosa painter, too little seen in Western collections.
Colors in this work
Details
- Date
- late 1500s
- Dimensions
- image: height 1.605 m, width 3.62 m
- Department
- Japanese Art
- Holding institution
- Cleveland Museum of Art
- Palette
-
Select a color to find related artworks.
- Image provider
- cleveland-museum-of-art
- License
- CC0-1.0
- Credit
- Leonard C. Hanna Jr. Fund
Art Genome Taxonomy
11 tags
Subject Matter
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Animals Both · 99%
Birds are prominent in the image; the museum identifies the principal imagery as a phoenix and peacocks.
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Flora Both · 99%
Bamboo, broad-leaved trees identified in the catalog as paulownia, flowering plants, grasses, and rocks structure the landscape.
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Mythology and Religion Metadata · 90%
The museum identifies the central bird as a legendary phoenix and discusses its origins in Chinese mythology and its auspicious political associations in sixteenth-century Japan.
Visual Qualities
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Highly Ornamented Visual · 97%
The gilded ground, patterned feathers, stylized foliage, mineral-green rocks, and ornamental border create a strongly decorative surface.
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Flatness Visual · 97%
The scene compresses depth into discrete vegetation and rock forms distributed across a largely unmodulated gold field.
Medium and Techniques
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Painting Metadata · 99%
The museum classifies the object as a painting and identifies its medium as ink, color, and gold on a six-panel screen.
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Work on Paper Metadata · 99%
The support is identified as gilded paper.
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Screen Format Metadata · 99%
The object is one of a pair of six-panel screens.
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Gold Leaf and Gilding Both · 99%
Gold visibly covers the background, and the museum describes the use of gold foil and gilded paper.
Time Periods
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16th Century Art Metadata · 99%
The museum dates the work to the late 1500s, with dates spanning 1580–1599.
Geographic Regions
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Japanese Art Metadata · 99%
The place of origin is Japan, and the work is held in the museum's Japanese Art department.
Source & rights
Tosa Mitsuyoshi (Japanese, 1539–1613). Peacocks and Bamboo. Cleveland Museum of Art.
High-resolution sources
- Original TIFF ↗ 13,917 × 6,456 · Cleveland Museum Of Art · Available