Japanese Screen: Painting Peony, Plum and Bamboo with Ducks

Japanese Six Panel Screen: Winter Scene of Pine, Plum, and Bamboo Under Crescent Moon. Pine, plum and bamboo are known as the three friends of winter, because they all thrive and bl...

Japanese two-panel screen: Peony and Cherry, Edo period (circa 1800) painting, formerly fusuma (Japanese sliding doors), executed in the Kano school style, featuring a cherry tree in...

Japanese two-panel screen: Peony, Wisteria, cherry and bamboo on soft silver, Meiji period (1868-1912) painting of a garden in spring. Painted in mineral pigments on oxidized silver ...

Japanese six-panel screen: Winter landscape with flowering plum, Meiji period (1868-1912) painting of a full moon with wild grasses between river's edge and a snow covered plum tree ...

A tall, beautifully hand-painted on wood panel folding screen of Japanese style by artist Robert Crowder (b. 1911 - d.2010). Signed on the back side. After working as a missionary in Korea, Crowder went to Japan to study Nihonga ("Japanese-style paintings" are paintings that have been made in accordance with traditional Japanese artistic conventions, techniques and materials. While based on traditions over a thousand years old, the term was coined in the Meiji period of the Imperial Japan, to distinguish such works from Western-style paintings) Robert H...

Enhance your decor with this exquisite Japanese 4-Panel Screen featuring Ducks in Autumn. The serene scene is beautifully rendered, capturing the essence of nature in traditional Jap...

This early 20th-century Japanese byobu screen captures a serene moment in nature, with a large willow tree casting its graceful branches over a secluded cove. Three playful ducks gat...

Three Friends of Winter Nakajima Raisho (1796-1871) Late Edo period, circa 1850 Ink and gold leaf on paper. This is a double-sided Japanese Furosaki or tea-ceremony screen from the mid 19th century; bamboo and plum on the front, young pines the back. It by Nakajima Raisho, a master painter of the Maruyama school in the late Edo and early Meiji periods. In this work Raisho combines exquisite ink brushwork with large open spaces of brilliant gold-leaf to inspire the viewers imagination. Rather than naturalism, he is searching for the phycological impression of the motifs, resulting in abstraction and stylization. His simplification of the motifs the result of looking to capture the inner nature of the objects. This art motif is known as Sho Chiku Bai, or the Three Friends of Winter. Evergreen pine connotes steadfastness, bamboo suggests both strength and flexibility, while plum blossoms unfurling on snow-laden branches imply hardiness. Combined, this trio is emblematic of Japanese new year. Chinese literati were the first to group the three plants together due to their noble characteristics. Like these resilient plants flowering so beautifully in winter, it was expected of the scholar-gentleman to cultivate a strong character with which he would be able to show the same degree of perseverance and steadfastness even during times of adverse conditions. The screen would have been placed near the hearth of a room used for the Japanese tea ceremony, shielding the fire from draughts and also forming a stimulating and decorative backdrop behind the tea utensils. It would have been used in the Hatsugama, or first tea-ceremony of the new year. Nakajima Raisho (1796-1871) originally studied under Watanabe Nangaku before entering the school of Maruyama Ozui. He was the highest ranking Maruyama school painter at the end of the Edo period and was known as one of the ‘Four Heian Families’ along with Kishi...