Returned to lender The Met accepts temporary loans of art both for short-term exhibitions and for long-term display in its galleries.
Scenes Illustrating Poems from The Tale of Genji (Hakubyō Genji monogatari emaki), Scrolls 3 and 4
Kaoku Gyokuei Japanese
Not on view
These handscrolls are from a set of six illustrating poems from Genji, which represent the pinnacle of ink-line drawing (hakubyō) in the amateur mode. The works exhibit an appealing hallmark of ink-line painting: exuberant, charmingly out-of-scale flowers and grasses, depicted with subtle gradations of ink. The elaborate paintings reflect a level of engagement with the tale found in Genji commentaries from the same period, making the attribution to Kaoku Gyokuei, a female author of commentaries and collections of Genji poetry, likely. The final scroll of the set has a rare dated colophon indicating that it was a copy of an earlier work.
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