
Collection Online as of August 17, 2022
(Japanese, 1699-1757)
Six-panel folding screen; ink and color on gilded paper
Image: 133.1 x 267.6 cm (52 3/8 x 105 3/8 in.); Overall: 136.5 x 271 cm (53 3/4 x 106 11/16 in.)
John L. Severance Fund 1954.127
not on view
In an episode from the tenth-century literary classic The Tales of Ise, a courtier happens upon a Buddhist priest on an ivy-covered pass on Mount Utsu, a Japanese homonym for “Melancholy Mountain.” He entrusts the priest with a letter to a former lover in the capital whom he laments he can no longer see, even in dreams. The Tales of Ise features poems set within a basic narrative of the journeys of a courtier in exile.