Chinese culture is one of the world's oldest cultures, originating thousands of years ago. The culture prevails across a large geographical region in East Asia and is extremely diverse, with customs and traditions varying greatly between provinces, cities, and even towns. The terms 'China' and the geographical landmass of 'China' have shifted across the centuries, with the last name being the Great Qing, before the name 'China' became commonplace in modernity.
Ogata Kōrin was a Japanese landscape illustrator, lacquerer, painter, and textile designer of the Rinpa School.
Lacquerware are objects decoratively covered with lacquer. Lacquerware includes small or large containers, tableware, a variety of small objects carried by people, and larger objects such as furniture and even coffins painted with lacquer. Before lacquering, the surface is sometimes painted with pictures, inlaid with shell and other materials, or carved. The lacquer can be dusted with gold or silver and given further decorative treatments.
Tosa Mitsuoki was a Japanese painter.
Tenshō Shūbun was a Japanese Zen Buddhist monk and painter of the Muromachi period.
Japanese painting is one of the oldest and most highly refined of the Japanese visual arts, encompassing a wide variety of genres and styles. As with the history of Japanese arts in general, the long history of Japanese painting exhibits synthesis and competition between native Japanese aesthetics and the adaptation of imported ideas, mainly from Chinese painting, which was especially influential at a number of points; significant Western influence only comes from the 19th century onwards, beginning at the same time as Japanese art was influencing that of the West.
Byōbu are Japanese folding screens made from several joined panels, bearing decorative painting and calligraphy, used to separate interiors and enclose private spaces, among other uses.
Nanban art (南蛮美術) refers to Japanese art of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries influenced by contact with the Nanban (南蛮) or 'Southern barbarians', traders and missionaries from Europe and specifically from Portugal. It is a Sino-Japanese word, Chinese Nánmán, originally referring to the peoples of South Asia and Southeast Asia. During the Nanban trade period, the word took on a new meaning when it came to designate the Portuguese, who first arrived in 1543, and later other Europeans. The term also refers to paintings which Europeans brought to Japan.
Coromandel lacquer is a type of Chinese lacquerware, latterly mainly made for export, so called only in the West because it was shipped to European markets via the Coromandel coast of south-east India, where the Dutch East Indies Company (VOC) and its rivals from a number of European powers had bases in the 18th century. The most common type of object made in the style, both for Chinese domestic use and exports was the Coromandel screen, a large folding screen with as many as twelve leaves, coated in black lacquer with large pictures using the kuan cai technique, sometimes combined with mother of pearl inlays. Other pieces made include chests and panels.
Ancient furniture was made of many different materials, including reeds, wood, stone, metals, straws, and ivory. It could also be decorated in many different ways. Sometimes furniture would be covered with upholstery, upholstery being padding, springs, webbing, and leather. Features which would mark the top of furniture, called finials, were common. To decorate furniture, contrasting pieces would be inserted into depressions in the furniture. This practice is called inlaying.
Hasegawa Kyūzō was the son of Hasegawa Tōhaku, and a painter of the Hasegawa school in the Azuchi–Momoyama period Japan.
The Hikone screen is a Japanese painted byōbu folding screen of unknown authorship made during the Kan'ei era. The 94-×-274.8-centimetre (37.0 × 108.2 in) screen folds in six parts and is painted on gold-leaf paper. It depicts people in the pleasure quarters of Kyoto playing music and games. The screen comes from the feudal Hikone Domain, ruled by the screen's owners, the Ii clan. It is owned by the city of Hikone in Shiga Prefecture, in the Ii Naochika Collection.
Cypress Trees is a Kanō-school byōbu or folding screen attributed to the Japanese painter Kanō Eitoku (1543–1590), one of the most prominent patriarchs of the Kanō school of Japanese painting. The painting dates to the Azuchi–Momoyama period (1573–1615). Now in Tokyo National Museum, it has been designated a National Treasure.
The Pine Trees screen is a pair of six-panel folding screens by the Japanese artist Hasegawa Tōhaku, founder of the Hasegawa school of Japanese art. The precise date for the screens is not known, but they were clearly made in the late 16th century, in the Momoyama period, around 1595. The screens are held by the Tokyo National Museum, and were designated as a National Treasure of Japan in 1952.
Irises is a pair of six-panel folding screens (byōbu) by the Japanese artist Ogata Kōrin of the Rinpa school. It depicts an abstracted view of water with drifts of Japanese irises. The work was probably made circa 1701–1705, in the period of luxurious display in the Edo period known as Genroku bunka.
Flowering Plants of Summer and Autumn (夏秋草図屏風) is a painting on a pair of two-folded byōbu folding screens by Rinpa artist Sakai Hōitsu depicting plants and flowers from the autumn and summer seasons.
Wind God and Thunder God is a painting on a pair of two-folded byōbu by Rinpa artist Ogata Kōrin, a replica of a similar work by Tawaraya Sōtatsu, depicting Raijin, the god of lightning, thunder and storms in the Shinto religion and in Japanese mythology, and Fūjin, the god of wind.
Rough Waves is a painting by the Japanese artist Ogata Kōrin, on a two-panel byōbu. The work was created c. 1704 – c. 1709, and depicts a swirl of stormy sea waves. It has been in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, since 1926, when it was acquired with financial support from the Fletcher Fund.
The Cracked Ice screen is a late 18th-century low two-fold Japanese screen (byōbu) intended for use at the Japanese tea ceremony. It was created in the Edo period and is signed and sealed by the artist, Maruyama Ōkyo (1733–1795), founder of the Maruyama school of realist painting. It would be used as a furosaki byōbu placed near the hearth of a room used for the Japanese tea ceremony, shielding the fire from draughts and also forming a decorative backdrop behind the tea utensils. It may have been intended to be used in the summer, to evoke the cool of the winter.
The Azuchi Screens are a set of six-folding screens depicting Azuchi Castle and its nearby town. Oda Nobunaga gifted them to Pope Gregory XIII, who displayed them in the Vatican collections, where they were admired by visitors. However, they disappeared from historical record. Their fate is unknown and they are considered to be lost. The screens must have been pivotal works in the development of Japanese folding screens.
