Morning Glories
| Support Type: | Paper |
| Paint Type: | Ink |
| Current Location: | The Metropolitan Museum of Art |
| Location History: | Morning Glories was created in Japan during the early nineteenth century, likely in Edo (present-day Tokyo), where Suzuki Kiitsu worked as a leading painter of the Rinpa school. The folding screens remained in Japan until the mid-twentieth century, when they were acquired by The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in 1954 through the Seymour Fund, becoming part of the museum's Asian Art collection, where they are preserved today. |
Suzuki Kiitsu was one of the esteemed and most accomplished disciple of Sakai Hoitsu, where along with carrying out his duties as a student he also played a significant role in carrying the Rinpa tradition into the late Edo period. His paintings do not just depict the beauty of nature with extreme precision but also show a style of sensitivity to rhythm, balance, and changing seasons. Created in the early nineteenth century, this art piece portrays the brilliance of a unique and much refined persuasion of the Rinpa school of painting. "Morning Glories" by Suzuki Kiitsu is a depiction of fleeting beauty, capturing a cluster of delicate blossoms as they stretch gracefully across a pair of folding screens. The bold and vibrant indigo color of the flower make them much alive than a painting possibly can, almost as if they are right in front of the viewers. Rather than occupying the empty spaces the ivy vines follow a particular trail after every flower, some places they clump up while leaving other spaces to be. This artwork leaves us with awe, enchantment, and wonder of what an incredible artist Suzuki Kiitsu was, while delivering the larger themes of renewal and ephemerality of our gargantuan natural world.
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