- Gallery Text
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Lotuses rise annually from the muddy depths of ponds to bloom with sublime beauty before setting seed, decaying, and disappearing once more. The unearthly flower has long been understood as a symbol of Buddhist enlightenment and rebirth. This large-scale iteration of a lotus pond is painted on two movable screens—ideal for display in Japan’s earliest public exhibitions, initiated in the late 19th century to support the formulation of a representatively "Japanese" aesthetic on the world stage. Shūseki paints the sacred subject matter in a contemporary neoclassical idiom, using the established technique of puddling ink and gold to realize the plant in naturalistic and expressionistic modes simultaneously. The addition of a kingfisher in the right screen and a dragonfly in the left, both captured in the instant before taking wing, poignantly infuses temporal specificity into the otherwise timeless subject.
- Identification and Creation
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- Object Number
- TL41729.16
- People
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Okutani Shūseki, Japanese (1871 - 1936)
- Title
- Lotus Pond
- Classification
- Paintings
- Work Type
- screen, painting
- Date
- late 19th - early 20th century
- Places
- Creation Place: East Asia, Japan
- Period
- Meiji period, 1868-1912
- Culture
- Japanese
- Persistent Link
- https://hvrd.art/o/340568
- Location
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Level 3, Room 3500, Special Exhibitions Gallery
View this object's location on our interactive map - Physical Descriptions
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- Medium
- Pair of two-panel folding screens; ink, color, and gold on silk
- Dimensions
- image only, each panel: 170.5 x 93.3 cm (67 1/8 x 36 3/4 in.)
with mount, each panel: 175.5 x 95 cm (69 1/8 x 37 3/8 in.) - Inscriptions and Marks
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- inscription: each screen: Shuseki dojin hitsu
- Acquisition and Rights
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- Credit Line
- Promised gift of Robert S. and Betsy G. Feinberg
- Object Number
- TL41729.16
- Division
- Asian and Mediterranean Art
- Contact
- am_asianmediterranean@harvard.edu
- The Harvard Art Museums encourage the use of images found on this website for personal, noncommercial use, including educational and scholarly purposes. To request a higher resolution file of this image, please submit an online request.
- Publication History
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Rachel Saunders and Yukio Lippit, Painting Edo: Selections from the Feinberg Collection of Japanese Art, exh. cat. (Cambridge, MA, 2020), pp. 98-99, fig. 85
- Exhibition History
- Subjects and Contexts
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Google Art Project
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This record has been reviewed by the curatorial staff but may be incomplete. Our records are frequently revised and enhanced. For more information please contact the Division of Asian and Mediterranean Art at am_asianmediterranean@harvard.edu