Landscape of the four seasons, one of a pair

This pair of screens (B60D3 and B60D58+) presents the passage of seasons across a wide, dreamlike Chinese-style landscape. The setting changes as we move from right to left, opening in springtime with two scholars in a pavilion with a view of blossoming trees. Further along, a boating party and willows suggest the pleasures of summer, and, on the left screen, returning geese in the sky signal the shift to autumn. Finally, cloaked figures, bare branches and brown leaves, and distant, snow-covered peaks call to mind winter’s chill.

Although the screens are unsigned, their rigorous brushwork, flattened landscape forms, and decorative use of ocher and green pigments with black ink suggest the hand of a painter working in the Kanto region of Eastern Japan. The artist may have been a follower of the Zen monk Kenko Shokei (active approx. 1478–1506), whose seals are impressed on the screens. Or the painter may have been affiliated with the eastern branch of the Kano school, whose professional studios served the diverse artistic needs of Japan’s military rulers.