Old Plum

The massive black trunk of an ancient plum tree stretches across four sliding panels, its gnarled branches twisting vigorously. Against the gold ground, delicate blossoms sprouting from the old tree suggest the chill of early spring and symbolize renewal. These panels originally formed one wall of a room in Tenshōin, a subtemple of Myōshinji, a major Zen complex in Kyoto. Once visible in an adjacent room at Myōshinji and now preserved in the Minneapolis Institute of Art, their reverses depict the Chinese theme of the “Eight Daoist Immortals.”
The panels showing the “Old Plum” were sold to a private collector in the 1880s and later trimmed at the top. They entered The Met in 1975 as among the master works of the Packard Collection. The Shōin Room was constructed in 1987 to display the paintings in a setting resembling a formal reception room of Edo-period Japan.