Important Cultural PropertyImmortals and Lofty Scholars

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  • Pair of six-panel folding screens
  • Kyoto National Museum
  • A甲542

This painting, now mounted as a pair of six-panel folding screens, has traces of round door handles indicating that it was once a set of sliding doors. When the two panels are placed side by side in their former arrangement, the composition appears incomplete, with the sagely figures on the right looking into the distance beyond the screen. Perhaps there was once a small immortal flying on a neighboring panel, which is lost today.
Immortals and Lofty Scholars may also originally have been part of a series of screen paintings that belonged to a subtemple of Ken’nin-ji, though there is no evidence of this. The brushstrokes and facial features of this work resemble those of two Chinese hermits, Xuyou and Chaofu (Tokyo National Museum) on a pair of hanging scrolls by Kanô Eitoku, suggesting that Eitoku may have also created these panels. The dramatic tension throughout the entire composition attests to the fact that this masterpiece dates to the Momoyama period.

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