A former curator at the Kyoto National Museum says paintings owned by a family in northern Japan are likely to be the missing parts of a set that includes artifacts housed by the British Museum.
Yamashita Yoshiya inspected paintings on four sliding door panels owned by the Aomori-based Miyakoshi family, which accrued a precious art collection in the early 20th century.
He says it is “highly likely” that the pictures of flowers and birds of spring and summer are counterparts to the scenes of autumn and winter on the panels in the British Museum. The latter panels were painted by an artist from Japan’s Kano School of painting in the early Edo period in the 17th century.
The Miyakoshi family’s panels show blooming cherry trees to represent spring, and pheasants to signify summer.
Yamashita says the flow of a stream appears to connect it to one of the panels kept in Britain. He says the style of painting and the shape of metal handles in Japan and Britain are identical.
The autumn and winter panels are said to have originally belonged to the Tanzan Shrine in Sakurai City, Nara Prefecture. Experts had long speculated that there may be matching panels somewhere.
Yamashita says the paintings are very important works as they show a change in Japanese culture from the magnificent style of the Momoyama period to a more delicate one in the Edo period. He says he is glad the paintings have survived all the wars and disasters of the past 400 years.
The Kano School is a family of artists whose painting style dominated Japanese art for about 400 years, starting from the 15th century. Founder Kano Masanobu was the chief painter of the Ashikaga shogunate in the Muromachi period.