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拍品專文
The two panels are covered with a dazzling collage of more than twenty decorated folding fans-open, closed and partially opened. The fans are evenly distributed over the left and right panels in a seemingly haphazard arrangement of arcs and diagonals picked out in gold leaf, encrusted crushed malachite and oyster-shell powder (gofun).
Simplified, abstract patterns and luxurious use of gold and silver with bold accents of opaque malachite green are hallmarks of the studio of Tawaraya Sotatsu (died circa 1640), a member of the wealthy merchant class. One fan has decorative waves; another reveals boats and boatmen on a stream. Some feature flowers, foliage, bamboo and pines. There are two with figures from the imperial court-a group of attendants in white robes and stiff black court caps (eboshi) on the far right of the right screen, and a rotund, bearded aristocrat with puffy trousers seated against a plain silver ground at the top of the left panel. Perhaps he is one of the famous Thirty-six Immortal Poets of the Heian period (794-1185). His placement and scale lend an element of gravitas to the composition. Five fans have classical Japanese poems written in elegant calligraphy in ink on plain paper. One is quite frayed, giving the impression of having been well used.
The designs are of a type developed by Sotatsu and continued by his followers. Sotatsu may have based some of his designs on fragments of earlier illustrated handscrolls. Fans associated with his school have become even more important for the reconstruction of those lost scrolls.
The Japanese have painted on paper folding fans since at least the twelfth century. No other culture prizes fans as highly. They are indispensable for both men and women, not only for their functional role but as an intimate surface for painting and poetry and as emblems of elegance. Usually, designs are painted before the paper is folded and pasted onto the bamboo ribs. By the fifteenth century, artists began to arrange fans on folding screens.
There are similar Sotatsu-school screens of scattered fans in the Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, and in the Langen Collection, Germany. For the latter, see Miyeko Murase, Herbstwind in den Kiefern: Japanische Kunst des Sammlung Langen (Munich, London and New York: Prestel, 1998), pl. 84.
Simplified, abstract patterns and luxurious use of gold and silver with bold accents of opaque malachite green are hallmarks of the studio of Tawaraya Sotatsu (died circa 1640), a member of the wealthy merchant class. One fan has decorative waves; another reveals boats and boatmen on a stream. Some feature flowers, foliage, bamboo and pines. There are two with figures from the imperial court-a group of attendants in white robes and stiff black court caps (eboshi) on the far right of the right screen, and a rotund, bearded aristocrat with puffy trousers seated against a plain silver ground at the top of the left panel. Perhaps he is one of the famous Thirty-six Immortal Poets of the Heian period (794-1185). His placement and scale lend an element of gravitas to the composition. Five fans have classical Japanese poems written in elegant calligraphy in ink on plain paper. One is quite frayed, giving the impression of having been well used.
The designs are of a type developed by Sotatsu and continued by his followers. Sotatsu may have based some of his designs on fragments of earlier illustrated handscrolls. Fans associated with his school have become even more important for the reconstruction of those lost scrolls.
The Japanese have painted on paper folding fans since at least the twelfth century. No other culture prizes fans as highly. They are indispensable for both men and women, not only for their functional role but as an intimate surface for painting and poetry and as emblems of elegance. Usually, designs are painted before the paper is folded and pasted onto the bamboo ribs. By the fifteenth century, artists began to arrange fans on folding screens.
There are similar Sotatsu-school screens of scattered fans in the Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, and in the Langen Collection, Germany. For the latter, see Miyeko Murase, Herbstwind in den Kiefern: Japanische Kunst des Sammlung Langen (Munich, London and New York: Prestel, 1998), pl. 84.