This single screen, one of the finest examples of painting by Tosa Mitsuyoshi, encapsulates the imagined visual splendor of Genji’s Rokujō estate and conflates episodes from two different days in one composition. Ladies-in-waiting from the autumn quadrant of the Umetsubo Empress (Akikonomu) have arrived in Murasaki’s spring garden on a water bird boat on the upper left. The foreground scene takes place the next day, when page girls spectacularly costumed as paradisal kalavinka birds and butterflies of the court bugaku dance arrive at the autumn quadrant via dragon boat. The girls have been sent by Murasaki with flower offerings for the Empress’s sutra reading. The profusion of cherry blossoms throughout the screen illustrates the dominance of the spring season.
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源氏物語図屏風 (胡蝶)
Title:“Butterflies”
Artist:Tosa Mitsuyoshi (Japanese, 1539–1613)
Period:Momoyama period (1573–1615)
Date:late 16th–early 17th century
Culture:Japan
Medium:Six-panel folding screen; ink, color, gold, and gold leaf on paper
Dimensions:65 in. × 12 ft. 3/4 in. (165.1 × 367.7 cm)
Classification:Paintings
Credit Line:Mary Griggs Burke Collection, Gift of the Mary and Jackson Burke Foundation, 2015
Accession Number:2015.300.32
The scene that appears on this screen illustrates an episode from "Kochō" (Butterflies), the twenty-fourth chapter of the Genji monogatari. Spring festivities have been organized for the gardens of Genji's residence, Rokujō Palace. Dragon and phoenix boats, "brilliantly decorated in the Chinese fashion"[1] and bearing ladies dressed in their most elegant clothes, are launched on the lake; another boat carries the male musicians. The following day, a sutra reading is hosted by Empress Akikonomu. Guests don formal attire. Murasaki, Genji's favorite consort, dresses several of her prettiest young attendants as birds and butterflies, and sends them to dance in front of Akikonomu's quarters:
The birds brought cherry blossoms in silver vases, the butterflies yamabuki in gold vases. In wonderfully rich and full bloom, they completed a perfect picture.[2]
The screen painting conflates these events of two consecutive days into a single scene. The empress's residence is depicted at the lower right; above, other sections of the palace are shown filled with people watching the dancers.
Small squares of tissue-thin gold leaf, scattered over the cloud forms that hover above the palace chambers, create a golden mist. Except in the areas screened by clouds, interiors are exposed, with rooftops eliminated, in the pictorial convention known as fukinuki yatai (room with roof blown away). Cherry trees laden with pink blossoms set off the deep green of the hillocks and the inky blue of the lake. The warm tones of red and pink that dominate the costumes stand out in relief against the shimmering gold of the ground and clouds. The entire image is suffused with the warmth of a spring day and the joy of the festivities.
The screen is generally accepted as the work of Tosa Mitsuyoshi (1539–1613), a hitherto neglected artist of the Tosa school. The family had long served as official painters to the imperial court, but their fortunes fell during the sixteenth century along with those of their patrons, the Ashikaga shoguns. At the close of the Muromachi period the leader of the Tosa school, Mitsumoto (ca. 1530–1569), was in service to the powerful warlords Oda Nobunaga (1534–1582) and Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1536–1598). When Mitsumoto was killed in battle, his three children were left in the care of a pupil named Genji, who may have later changed his name to Mitsuyoshi.[3] Mitsuyoshi inherited the family's estate and documents, as well as painting models and other materials. He later moved to Sakai, then a thriving port city south of Osaka, and sometime before 1593 took the tonsure and the priestly name "Kyūyoku."[4] Various members of the Kano family in Kyoto wrote to Genji urging him to return to the capital, but he chose to remain in Sakai.[5] About 1599, Kano Takanobu (1571–1618) assumed the position of official painter to the court, thus ending the preeminence of the Tosa school.[6]
Scholars are slowly beginning to identify Mitsuyoshi's oeuvre. Most works depict events from the Genji monogatari. Among the firmly attributed works are two Genji albums, one in the Kyoto National Museum, the other in the Kubosō Memorial Museum of Arts, south of Osaka.[7] Both albums bear the seal "Tosa Kyūyoku," Mitsuyoshi's priestly name. A leaf separated from a folding screen and now in the Burke Collection has also been assigned to Mitsuyoshi's hand.[8] All the Genji paintings are small, delicately drawn, and richly colored. In addition, several large-scale Genji screen paintings have been accepted as the work of Mitsuyoshi on purely stylistic grounds, although they contain neither seal nor signature. A pair of four-fold screens in The Metropolitan Museum of Art are regarded as the earliest of Mitsuyoshi's largescale works, with the Burke screen slightly later but still from his early period.[9] The two Genji albums, on the other hand, have been dated to the last years of his life. The Kubosō album has been assigned to 1613, the year of Mitsuyoshi's death; the Kyoto album is viewed as incomplete, a work in progress at his death.[10] The album leaf in the Burke Collection has also been dated to his late period, as it bears a "Kyūyoku" seal.
The years that separate the small from the large-scale paintings, as well as the difference in their sizes, make it difficult to attribute the Burke screen paintings to Mitsuyoshi on purely stylistic grounds. Some small features, however, are useful markers for stylistic comparison, such as the small chins and large eyes of the bearded male figures that appear in both the Burke screen and the Metropolitan screens. Other details—the screens-within-screens, the rocks highlighted with gold, the use of fine ink lines for texture—also indicate a clear connection.
[Miyeko Murase 2000, Bridge of Dreams]
[1] Murasaki Shikibu 1976, p. 418. [2] Ibid., pp. 422–23. [3] Some scholars do not believe that Genji and Mitsuyoshi were the same person; see lwama Kaoru 1986, p. 168. [4] Miyajima Shin'ichi 1986, p. 76. [5] The Tosa-ke monjo (Tosa Family Documents), handed down in the Tosa clan, are now in the collection of the Kyoto Municipal University of the Arts. [6] Miyajima Shin'ichi 1986, p. 76. [7] See, respectively, Takeda Tsuneo 1976, pp. 3–40; and Narazaki Muneshige 1953. For color reproductions, see Akiyama Ken and Taguchi Eiichi 1988. [8] Tokyo National Museum 1985a, no. 37. ]9] Miyajima Shin'ichi 1986, p. 57. [10] Akiyama Terakazu 1976, p. 66.
Mary and Jackson Burke Foundation , New York (until 2015; donated to MMA)
Tokyo National Museum. "Nihon bijutsu meihin ten: nyūyōku bāku korekushon," May 21, 1985–June 30, 1985.
Nagoya City Art Museum. "Nihon bijutsu meihin ten: nyūyōku bāku korekushon," August 17, 1985–September 23, 1985.
Atami. MOA Museum of Art. "Nihon bijutsu meihin ten: nyūyōku bāku korekushon," September 29, 1985–October 27, 1985.
Hamamatsu City Museum of Art. "Nihon bijutsu meihin ten: nyūyōku bāku korekushon," November 12, 1985–December 1, 1985.
New York. Asia Society. "Art of Japan: Selections from the Burke Collection, pts. I and II," October 2, 1986–February 22, 1987.
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Courtly Romance in Japanese Art," May 12–July 12, 1989.
Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt. "Die Kunst des Alten Japan: Meisterwerke aus der Mary and Jackson Burke Collection," September 16, 1990–November 18, 1990.
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Masterpieces of Japanese Art from The Mary Griggs Burke Collection," March 30–June 25, 2000.
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Great Waves: Chinese Themes in the Arts of Korea and Japan II," March 22–September 21, 2003.
Museum of Fine Arts, Gifu. "Enduring Legacy of Japanese Art: The Mary Griggs Burke Collection," July 5, 2005–August 19, 2005.
Hiroshima Prefectural Art Museum. "Enduring Legacy of Japanese Art: The Mary Griggs Burke Collection," October 4, 2005–December 11, 2005.
Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum. "Enduring Legacy of Japanese Art: The Mary Griggs Burke Collection," January 24, 2006–March 5, 2006.
Miho Museum. "Enduring Legacy of Japanese Art: The Mary Griggs Burke Collection," March 15, 2006–June 11, 2006.
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Celebrating the Arts of Japan: The Mary Griggs Burke Collection," October 20, 2015–May 14, 2017.
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "The Tale of Genji: A Japanese Classic Illuminated," March 5–June 16, 2019.
Tsuji Nobuo 辻惟雄, Mary Griggs Burke, Nihon Keizai Shinbunsha 日本経済新聞社, and Gifu-ken Bijutsukan 岐阜県美術館. Nyūyōku Bāku korekushon-ten: Nihon no bi sanzennen no kagayaki ニューヨーク・バーク・コレクション展 : 日本の美三千年の輝き(Enduring legacy of Japanese art: The Mary Griggs Burke collection). Exh. cat. [Tokyo]: Nihon Keizai Shinbunsha, 2005, cat. no. 72.
Murase, Miyeko, Il Kim, Shi-yee Liu, Gratia Williams Nakahashi, Stephanie Wada, Soyoung Lee, and David Sensabaugh. Art Through a Lifetime: The Mary Griggs Burke Collection. Vol. 1, Japanese Paintings, Printed Works, Calligraphy. [New York]: Mary and Jackson Burke Foundation, [2013], pp. 48–49, cat. no. 69.
Carpenter, John T., and Melissa McCormick. The Tale of Genji: A Japanese Classic Illuminated. Exh. cat. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2019, pp. 190–93, cat. no. 47.
Angela Salisbury, senior associate for Archival Processing, details what she has learned about Mary Griggs Burke as a collector and philanthropist from a trove of Mrs. Burke's personal correspondence, scrapbooks, and documents.
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