Merrymaking Under the Cherry Blossoms

This pair of screens depicts a scene of cherry-blossom viewing. The left-hand screen features a young nobleman watching colorfully dressed men and women dancing from the veranda of a temple. The two center panels of the right-hand screen were destroyed during the Great Kanto Earthquake in 1923. They depicted two noble ladies in luxurious robes, seated on mats and enjoying music under a blossoming cherry tree, as shown in the photograph below. The subdued colors of the surrounding motifs, such as the building and the distant landscape, are painted on a plain paper background without gold, which enhances the colorful splendor of the party scene. The partygoers are visible through the thin curtains which surround the site, originally executed in silver paint which has since turned black. These figures, and the motifs on their garments in particular, have been precisely depicted. A close look at their facial features reveals that their eyes have been carefully outlined, and white pigment has been applied to their corners to make them more vivid. Their movements, such as hand-clapping and the tapping of their feet to the rhythm, is likewise accurately expressed. With superb skill, the artist Kano Naganobu has created a lively scene from which we can almost hear the merry music. Kano Naganobu was a younger brother of Kano Eitoku (1543-1590), a great master of the Kano school and one of the most famous painters of the early modern age (1573-1868). Although there are barely any surviving works known to be by Naganobu, through this pair of screens alone he is recognized as being one of the representative artists of the Azuchi-Momoyama period (1573-1603).