A new selection of paintings in the museum's Asian Galleries surveys some of the appealing figure styles available to artists working in Japan's long and prosperous Edo period (1615–1868). These paintings artfully blend styles first developed during the classic Heian period of the eleventh and twelfth centuries-the colorful and elegant art of the court and the informal, caricature-like ink painting of Zen Buddhist priests. Added later were elements drawn from the brash genre style of urban artists, the vibrant simplicity of folk paintings, and the technical novelty of newly imported Western prints. Painters of haiga, pictures that often accompanied haiku poetry, created radically simplified figures with a few abbreviated brushstrokes. Nanga followers, working in the mode of Chinese scholar-painters, emphasized individualized features on close-up faces. Rimpa painters found inspiration in the brilliantly colored art of the Heian court, reviving classic themes, as in The Poet Hitomaro by Sakai Hoitsu, but reconceiving them in almost abstract compositions that contrasted areas of pattern with bold shapes. Finally, the long handscroll Activities of the Four Seasons in Kyoto repays close viewing with its humorous genre scenes of ordinary townspeople. Painted by Komai Genki, an artist of the famously eclectic Maruyama-Shijo School, its style fuses diverse elements, even to the beginnings of Western-influenced shading.
