Court Ladies Enjoying Wayside Chrysanthemums (Important Cultural Property)

Two aristocratic women are seen riding in an ox card, enjoying a roadside scene of chrysanthemums in full bloom. Their faces, plump cheeked and long-jawed, are a unique form which combine with the detailed motifs and long flowing hair as indications of this painter's individualistic style. In recent years the theory has been posited that this painting is based on a scene from The Tale of Genji. With such in mind, this painting can be considered an unusual example of ink-line-only Tale of Genji paintings, one with a richly carnal sensibility. Today mounted as hanging scroll, this painting was originally pasted on a set of screens made up of individual pasted images of ancient Chinese and Japanese narratives, along with pictures of tigers and dragons. Those screens were were at one time held by the Fukui clan, for whom Matabei was a clan painter, and when Naomasa, the second son of the clan lord Yûki Hideyasu became the clan lord of the Matsue clan, the screens are said to have been presented to the wealthy merchant Kanaya family who had fostered Naomasa.