In the seventeenth century Japanese aristocrats often composed and recited classical poetry while viewing foliage at appointed times of the year. During festivities, poems would be carefully written on patterned slips of paper (tanzaku) and tied to the branches of trees. In this screen, the premier court painter Tosa Mitsuoki described the inevitable transience of beauty by imagining the melancholy hours after the departure of the reveling courtiers, who had created poems with quotations of appropriate seasonal poetry from twelfth- and thirteenth-century anthologies inscribed on the narrow strips. The slips flutter in the gentle breeze, fastened to a maple bursting with red leaves in autumn.<\/p>\n
A companion screen, also in the Art Institute\u2019s collection, depicts a cherry tree in full bloom in spring. The screens were either commissioned by or given to Empress T\u014dfukumon-in, a daughter of the Tokugawa shogun (military leader), who married the emperor Gomizunoo (reigned 1611\u201329). In an era otherwise marked by the feudal shogunate\u2019s increasing control over imperial prerogatives, this royal couple encouraged a renaissance of courtly taste that nostalgically evoked early medieval aristocratic life. This pair of screens remains as evidence of this cultural flowering.<\/p>\n","short_description":null,"dimensions":"144 \u00d7 286 cm (56 3\/4 \u00d7 112 5\/8 in.)","dimensions_detail":[{"depth":null,"width":286,"height":144,"diameter":null,"clarification":null}],"medium_display":"Six-panel screen (one of pair); Ink, colors, gold leaf, and gold powder on silk","inscriptions":null,"credit_line":"Kate S. Buckingham Endowment","catalogue_display":null,"publication_history":"James Rondeau, ed., Paintings at the Art Institute of Chicago: Highlights of the collection <\/em> (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2025), 40 (ill.).","exhibition_history":null,"provenance_text":null,"edition":null,"publishing_verification_level":"Web Cataloged","internal_department_id":8,"fiscal_year":null,"fiscal_year_deaccession":null,"is_public_domain":true,"is_zoomable":true,"max_zoom_window_size":-1,"copyright_notice":null,"has_multimedia_resources":false,"has_educational_resources":false,"has_advanced_imaging":false,"colorfulness":43.8377,"color":{"h":152,"l":33,"s":55,"percentage":0.002270315062972864,"population":8},"latitude":null,"longitude":null,"latlon":null,"is_on_view":false,"on_loan_display":null,"gallery_title":null,"gallery_id":null,"nomisma_id":null,"artwork_type_title":"Painting","artwork_type_id":1,"department_title":"Arts of Asia","department_id":"PC-7","artist_id":26388,"artist_title":"Tosa Mitsuoki","alt_artist_ids":[],"artist_ids":[26388],"artist_titles":["Tosa Mitsuoki"],"category_ids":["PC-7","PC-831","PC-837"],"category_titles":["Arts of Asia","Essentials","Arts of Asia 100"],"term_titles":["silk (textile)","screen","trees","painting (image making)","Japanese (culture or style)","gold leaf","ink","maple trees","autumn","fall","poetry","landscapes","gold (color)","foliage","painting","asian art"],"style_id":"TM-13407","style_title":"Japanese (culture or style)","alt_style_ids":[],"style_ids":["TM-13407"],"style_titles":["Japanese (culture or style)"],"classification_id":"TM-311","classification_title":"screen","alt_classification_ids":["TM-9","TM-26"],"classification_ids":["TM-311","TM-9","TM-26"],"classification_titles":["screen","painting","asian art"],"subject_id":"TM-11205","alt_subject_ids":["TM-12499","TM-12500","TM-12501","TM-12502","TM-8657","TM-11859","TM-11206"],"subject_ids":["TM-11205","TM-12499","TM-12500","TM-12501","TM-12502","TM-8657","TM-11859","TM-11206"],"subject_titles":["trees","maple trees","autumn","fall","poetry","landscapes","gold (color)","foliage"],"material_id":"TM-2579","alt_material_ids":["TM-2425","TM-2398"],"material_ids":["TM-2579","TM-2425","TM-2398"],"material_titles":["silk (textile)","gold leaf","ink"],"technique_id":"TM-3891","alt_technique_ids":[],"technique_ids":["TM-3891"],"technique_titles":["painting (image making)"],"theme_titles":["Essentials","Arts of Asia 100"],"image_id":"86e919b9-d366-b3ca-d26f-4c16880474a3","alt_image_ids":["a8646837-9f22-0141-5716-fee38e53cc91","f195634e-74f1-210c-87b1-d03b4d63874e"],"document_ids":[],"sound_ids":[],"video_ids":[],"text_ids":[],"section_ids":[],"section_titles":[],"site_ids":[],"suggest_autocomplete_boosted":"Autumn Maples with Poem Slips","suggest_autocomplete_all":[{"input":["1977.157"],"contexts":{"groupings":["accession"]}},{"input":["Autumn Maples with Poem Slips"],"weight":10257,"contexts":{"groupings":["title"]}}],"source_updated_at":"2025-10-16T11:58:39-05:00","updated_at":"2026-08-25T23:24:52-05:00","timestamp":"2026-09-06T05:52:13-05:00"},"info":{"license_text":"The `description` field in this response is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Generic License (CC-By) and the Terms and Conditions of artic.edu. All other data in this response is licensed under a Creative Commons Zero (CC0) 1.0 designation and the Terms and Conditions of artic.edu.","license_links":["https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/publicdomain\/zero\/1.0\/","https:\/\/www.artic.edu\/terms"],"version":"1.15"},"config":{"iiif_url":"https:\/\/www.artic.edu\/iiif\/2","website_url":"http:\/\/www.artic.edu"}}