Flowers and Trees of the Four Seasons (left screen) (early to mid-1700s): Art, History and Details

Flowers and Trees of the Four Seasons (left screen) (early to mid-1700s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Watanabe Shikō (Japanese, 1683–1755).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

The painter Watanabe Shikō had a special interest in scientific realism, based on interactions with his patron Konoe Iehiro. Shikō combined his attention to accurate depiction of plants with strong ink outlines and decorative elements like gold and silver, arriving at an innovative style that influenced many of his peers in the city of Kyoto.

Object facts

• Title: Flowers and Trees of the Four Seasons (left screen)
• Date: early to mid-1700s
• Creator attribution: Watanabe Shikō (Japanese, 1683–1755)
• Culture: Japan, Edo period (1615–1868)
• Type: Painting
• Technique: Six-panel folding screen; ink, color, gold, silver, and gilding on paper
• Dimensions: Overall: 155 x 368.5 cm (61 x 145 1/16 in.)
• Collection: ASIAN - Folding screen
• Department: Japanese Art
• Accession number: 2021.132.2

A detail from the museum

One plant in these screens, tumeric, or ukon in Japanese, is found in Okinawa.

Collection credit

Severance and Greta Millikin Purchase Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Takeuchi Misako, “Flowers and Trees of the Four Seasons,” in Takeuchi Misako, et al., 琳派 : 特别展 : 美の継承 - 宗達, 光琳, 抱一, 其一 [= Rimpa: Succession of Beauty—Sotatsu, Korin, Hoitsu, Kiitsu]. Nagoya: Nagoya City Museum, 1994.
• Takeuchi, Melinda. “Watanabe Shikō (1683–1755): Flowers and Trees of the Four Seasons,” in Singer, Robert T, John T Carpenter, et al., Japan Foundation, Agency for Cultural Affairs, Japan., National Gallery of Art (U.S.). Edo, Art in Japan 1615-1868. Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art, 1998.
• Fukushi Yuya, “Watanabe Shikō hitsu: shiki sōka zu byōbu [Screens of Grasses and Flowers of the Four Seasons Painted by Watanabe Shikō],” in Kadō: Ikenobo [Way of Flowers: Journal of the Ikenobo School of Ikebana], January 2019, pp. 56–57.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.