Three Layers Forming the Pictorial Image: Suzuki Kiitsu’s Mountain Streams in Summer and Autumn

Mountain Streams in Summer and Autumn, is known as the representative work by Suzuki Kiitsu (1796–1858), a Rinpa painter from the Edo period. Labeled as “eccentric” in recent years, this fascinating pair of screens shows stylistic characteristics beyond what can be seen in Edo period paintings. This lecture will present how the work is a synthesis of three different influences from various times – that of Yamamoto Soken and the Kyoto Kano school, of Maruyama Ōkyo whose expressions were incorporated by the Edo Rinpa painters, and of Sakai Hōitsu, who was Kiitsu’s teacher.