The Gathering at the Orchid Pavilion (front); Geese among Reeds (back)

<BIG>この屏風は、353年、中国でおこなわれた春禊祭の行事を表わしている。この日王義之は、学者仲間とともに浙江省の蘭亭に集い、曲水の宴をもち、詩作、管弦と飲酒の一日を過ごした。

野口小蘋は、同時代の第一級の女性画家である。大坂（大阪）に生まれ、4歳にして絵を学び始め、京都画壇の日根対山に指導を受けた。小蘋は、1893年のシカゴ万国博覧会で、風景画を出品し賞を受け、また帝室技芸員にも任命された。この屏風は、彼女の娘により、1929年に開催された回顧展で展示されたものである。

両方の屏風の背面に、銀箔地に秋をテーマにした雁と葦が、より自由な画法で描かれている。このため屏風の表と裏面では、金地と銀地、春と秋、格式と略式の対比がなされている。</BIG>

The screen here shows the events of the Spring Purification Festival in A.D. 353. On that day, Wang Xizhi and a group of scholarly friends gathered at the Orchid Pavilion in Zhejiang province, China, for a day of poetry, music, and wine-drinking. As the men found pleasant spots on the banks of the stream, servants filled cups with rice wine, placed them on lotus leaves, and floated them downstream for the guests to pick up.

Noguchi Shohin was one of the leading women artists of her time. Born in Osaka, she began to study painting at the age of four, continuing under the tutelage of the Kyoto scholarly painter Hine Taizan. Shohin exhibited a prizewinning landscape in Chicago’s World’s Columbian Exhibition of 1893, and was appointed official artist of the Imperial Household. This pair of screens was displayed at a memorial exhibition organized by the artist’s daughter in 1929.

On the reverse side of both screens, there are paintings by the same artist done on silver-leaf ground in a looser manner depicting geese and reeds, a theme related to the autumn season. The back and front images therefore create several juxtapositions: gold and silver, spring and autumn, and formal and informal painting styles.