Two 18th-Century Painters

Watanabe Shikõ (1683-1755) and Maruyama Õkyo (1733-1795) Japan emerged from the 17th century a more stable nation, both politically and socially. Broad-based economic prosperity eased the traditional barriers of social class distinctions and in a practical sense provided artists with a larger number of clients. Traditional themes, mostly literary, lingered along with an emerging interest in urban culture and portrayals of the Japanese landscape. Both Maruyama Õkyo and Watanabe Shikõ produced detailed sketchbooks identifying wildlife and human anatomical features in a Western scientific manner. The paintings by them in this room conceal this dimension of their art unless one pays close attention to their descriptions of plant and bird forms, depicted in meticulously arranged spaces.
Watanabe Shikõ (1683-1755) Irises, 1700s Edo period (1615-1868) Pair of six-fold screens; ink and color on gilded paper Gift of The Norweb Foundation 1954.603.2	The subject of these byõbu derives from a five-line poem in the Tales of Ise (Ise Monogatari) said to be by Ariwara no Narihira (about AD 825-880). While journeying into exile from Kyoto, Narihira came upon irises blooming alongside a brook spanned by eight wooden planks. This unexpected spectacle of natural beauty in a wild, marshy setting caused the courtier to compose the poem whose imagery embraces emotional as well as geographical separation.
	Ogata Kõrin (1658-1716) executed two Irises screens, one of which did not include the wooden planks winding their way in zig-zag fashion through the flower clusters. Later Rinpa painters, like Shikõ, followed suit but none with the poetic lyricism and sheer beauty evident here. No flowers appear in their entirety and all are displayed in various stages of blooming or dying away, just as one would expect to see them in nature. As the viewer meanders from right to left through the composition, irises emerge out of and into the golden "landscape" that suggests spatial realms beyond the physical boundaries of these screens.
Maruyama Õkyo (1733-1795) Heron on a Willow Branch Edo period (1615-1868) Two-fold screen; ink and color on gilded paper Bequest of Mrs. A. Dean Perry 1997.108	Although Õkyo's capacity for realism exceeded that of his contemporaries, it is seldom obvious. Only in the artist's detailed sketchbooks of bird and plant life do we fully realize his meticulous eye for recording the world about him.
	Glimpses of that keenly observant sensibility appear here in Õkyo's characterization of the heron's overall form and selected details of its anatomy. The position of the head, tucked into the puffed-up feathers of the body, conveys the season: winter.
	This is reinforced by the stark black willow branch, which also emphasizes the picture's most important compositional feature, often unnoticed. The arc of the branch in and out and across the low horizontal byõbu framework illustrates the crucial role of emptiness in Japanese art.

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