Four Seasons Flowers

In the late Edo period, Sakai Hoitsu (1761–1829) carried on and enriched the Rinpa tradition of painting that had begun some two centuries earlier with Tawaraya Sotatsu and Ogata Korin. His focus on stylized motifs and visual interest led him to a unique style of botanical art that reached beyond faithful representation. Hoitsu’s lifelong body of plant paintings forms the centerpiece of this collection, which brings together 528 depictions of flowers by him and his successors Suzuki Kiitsu and Nakano Kimei taken from a woodblock-printed treasury published in the early twentieth century. Organized by season, the two compact volumes offer an inspiring design source for botanical art, porcelain painting, embroidery, and more. A list of plants in English makes the work an outstanding reference for readers of Japanese poetry and classical literature as well.