Pastimes of a Spring Afternoon
Returned to lender
This work of art was on loan to the museum and has since been returned to its lender.In the mid-eighteenth century, Japanese artists began producing copies of European vues d’optique imported from China, influencing Toyoharu to design miniature perspective views for these optical devices. Later, he redesigned many of these as horizontal prints of landscapes bustling with figures and lavish houses with many rooms opening into the far distance, using the simple one-point perspective he had learned from European engravings. He was also among the first Japanese artists to emphasize landscape or architectonic backgrounds in perspective, in proper proportional relation to the figures in the foreground.
In this two-panel folding tea screen, Toyoharu has used all of these tools to depict an afternoon outing of upper-class Japanese women and their children at a grand residence on the outskirts of a village. Sliding doors have been partly removed to reveal the spacious interior of the mansion where women are playing the koto and shamisen, smoking pipes, and enjoying the spring weather. Cherry trees are in bloom in the vast garden dotted with rustic pavilions into which young children have playfully pulled their mothers, perhaps in hopes of a ride in the boat on the lake.
In this two-panel folding tea screen, Toyoharu has used all of these tools to depict an afternoon outing of upper-class Japanese women and their children at a grand residence on the outskirts of a village. Sliding doors have been partly removed to reveal the spacious interior of the mansion where women are playing the koto and shamisen, smoking pipes, and enjoying the spring weather. Cherry trees are in bloom in the vast garden dotted with rustic pavilions into which young children have playfully pulled their mothers, perhaps in hopes of a ride in the boat on the lake.
Artwork Details
- 春景遊宴図屏風
- Title: Pastimes of a Spring Afternoon
- Artist: Utagawa Toyoharu (Japanese, 1735–1814)
- Period: Edo period (1615–1868)
- Date: ca. 1781–89
- Culture: Japan
- Medium: Two-panel folding screen; ink and color on silk
- Dimensions: Image: 26 9/16 × 70 3/8 in. (67.4 × 178.8 cm)
Overall with mounting: 28 1/8 × 72 1/16 × 1 5/8 in. (71.5 × 183 cm) - Classification: Screens
- Credit Line: Lent by Feinberg Collection
- Curatorial Department: Asian Art