Shimomura Kanzan was born in Wakayama Prefecture and went to Tokyo in 1881 to study nihonga under Kano Hogai. In 1886 he became a student of the other great Kano painter in Tokyo, Hashimoto Gaho (1835-1908). In 1889 Kanzan entered the Tokyo Art School as part of its inaugural class, where he continued to study with Gaho, the school's principal teacher. Kanzan also studied yamato-e painting styles under Kose Shoseki (1843-1919) and others, thus broadening his Kano-based training. After graduation he returned to the school as a teacher, and developed an intense loyalty to the headmaster, Okakura Tenshin. Kanzan joined the 1898 mass resignation when Okakura was dismissed and became a founding member of the new Japan Art Institute, becoming, alongside Yokoyama Taikan, Hishida Shunso and Kimura Buzan, one of its most loyal members. In 1901 he went back to the Tokyo Art School to teach in a conciliatory measure toward the ministry of Education. There he won a fellowship for study in Great Britain during 1903-1905, where he practiced watercolor painting and made copies of Western paintings. Upon his return, Kanzan returned to the Art Institute, followed its move to the seaside village of Izura, and joined Taikan to refound the institution in 1914 after Okakura's death. Kanzan remained a regular exhibitor in Inten (the Institute exhibition), and showed with the Bunten when the Institute was not feuding with the Ministry of Education. Kanzan served as a Bunten judge, was elected a Court Artist in 1917, and two years later, was voted to the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts, an honor he declined.

The screens offered here display a variety of characteristics, made possible by Kanzan's education under many masters. He is indebted to the Kano school for his handling of ink, while the realism and sense of depth in this work were techniques studied in art school classes, in Kyoto-based Maruyama school painting, and in his study in the West. The subtly shaded effects of sunlight are a legacy of morotai, where capturing atmosphere and light effects were one of the principal goals.