Myriad Birds, Insects and Flowers - Ueno Setsugaku Art Print

Spring forgot to leave in Ueno Setsugaku's Myriad Birds, Insects and Flowers, and summer showed up anyway. Cherry blossom crowds the top branches of this Edo period hanging scroll. Morning glory climbs through peonies. Autumn chrysanthemums flare at lower left, and a periwinkle iris keeps company with the cinnabar seals opposite.

In fact, Setsugaku paints the whole year at once. Two white pheasants stoop through the flowerbed, their plumes drawn in ink hairlines so fine they look combed. Soot-black magpies squabble in the grass below. Golden orioles flash from sage leaves overhead, and emerald jewel beetles crawl the foliage like dropped earrings.

He learned this packed exuberance in Kyoto under Yamamoto Baiitsu, whose Chinese-flavored bird-and-flower painting taught him to fill a surface without choking it. Ink and color on silk give this kachō-ga its honeyed ocher ground. Celadon hydrangeas cool the center. Near the bottom edge a lone dragonfly is still deciding where to land.

Hang this Japanese scroll painting print by a window, and watch its tea-gold silk take the late light like an ember that never went out.