Genre Scenes (Fūzoku byōbu) (About 1640): Artwork and History

Genre Scenes (Fūzoku byōbu) (About 1640) is in the Art Institute of Chicago collection. The museum lists its creator attribution as Artist unknown Japanese.

The work and its context

The Art Institute of Chicago describes the work:

The large building complex depicted here contains a bathhouse, teahouse, kitchen, puppet-show theater, and a games room. Inside, commoners and aristocrats alike enjoy the various forms of entertainment, while outside, people dance, play music, and wrestle. A kasamawashi, a street performer who balances objects on a spinning umbrella, performs to the left of the dancers. In scenes of merriment like this one, Japanese artists often depicted figures fighting—this painting includes a sumo match and people arguing over a game of shōgi—to emphasize the heightened levels of energy and excitement.

Object facts

• Title: Genre Scenes (Fūzoku byōbu)
• Date: About 1640
• Artist attribution: Artist unknown Japanese
• Place of origin: Japan
• Medium: Six-fold screen; ink, color, gold and silver on paper
• Dimensions: Painting: 147 × 349 cm (57 7/8 × 137 7/16 in.); Frame: 160.5 × 364 cm (63 1/4 × 143 5/16 in.)
• Type: Painting
• Department: Arts of Asia
• Reference number: 1958.307

Collection credit

Gift of Robert Allerton

View the original

Explore the artwork in the Art Institute's collection, including its image and the museum's current catalogue details.

The description above is credited to the Art Institute of Chicago and reused under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0; HTML formatting has been converted to plain text. Other catalogue metadata and the public-domain image are provided under CC0 1.0.