Hashimoto Kansetsu was born in Kobe, and studied modern Maruyama-Shijo school painting in Kyoto under Takeuchi Seiho (1864-1942). Kansetsu had his work first exhibited in 1908 by the Bunten, and he continued to show in that exhibition. From 1913, Kansetsu began to visit China regularly, traveling there as many as thirty times during his lifetime. Kansetsu was no doubt interested in China thanks to his father, a Confucian scholar, and his grandmother, who raised him and who had been educated in a Confucian school. This interest in China was expressed in his painting, where bunjinga style works gradually grew more prominent. Bunjinga was a style strongly represented in Kyoto and was based upon the literati painting and culture of Ming China. In addition to his travels in China, Kansetsu visited Europe in 1921 and again in 1927, where he developed an interest in Western-style painting as well.
The pair of screens offered here shows the breadth of Kansetsu's stylistic range: the subject matter is Chinese (Kansetsu did several works of northern Chinese grooms and horses), the naturalistic description ultimately relies on Maruyama-Shijo examples, though the individualization of the figures and trees, and the atmospheric sense may derive from Western sources. During his career Kansetsu was honored with frequent elections as a Teiten judge, was made a Court Artist in 1934, and a member of the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts in 1935.