RIMPA SCHOOL, AFTER SUZUKI KIITSU (1796 – 1858)

Sanjurokkasen (The Thirty-Six Immortal Poets)

Edo period, circa 1850

A pair of Japanese hanging scrolls, kakejiku, ink, colour and gilt on paper, mounted on brocade as hanging scrolls, each with an illegible stamp to the lower corner

132cm high, 63cm long (2)

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PROVENANCE:

English Private Collection, acquired in Japan in 1990s

In 1113 Fujiwara no Kintō (996 – 1075), a courtier, calligrapher and poet selected thirty-six waka poems (a composition of 31-syllables) by poets from 7^th-11^th centuries as examples of literary virtuosity. The compilation which emerged as a result became known as The Thirty-Six Immortal Poets, Sanjurokkasen, a suggested study material for aspiring poets.

The court painters instantly loved the subject. Initially each poet was depicted individually as a small portrait accompanying their verse. Ogata Kōrin (1658 – 1716), the master of Rimpa school famously painted them all gathered in a single room. Such a meeting was chronologically impossible but the idea of poetic contests (uta-awase) was well entrenched in the court life of the period and the design became very popular. Suzuki Kiitsu of the Rimpa school followed the old master and painted the subject on several occasions. A single hanging scroll from 1845 in the collection of Idemitsu Museum of Art in Tokyo, was widely copied by contemporary painters and the current scrolls directly derive from this composition. A similar work is housed in the British Museum, London, accession no 1980,0728,0.1. The curtain at the back of the room and the diagonal stripy edge of the tatami mat are present in many further comparable examples, such as the two-panel screen attributed to Tatebayashi Kagei (active mid-1700s) in Cleveland Museum of Art, accession no 1960.183, and two-panel screen by Ikeda Koson (1801 – 1866) in Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minneapolis, accession no 2015.79.89. A similar painting mounted as a two panel screen was sold in Bonhams New York on September 16^th 2014, lot 2043.

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