Morning Glories - Suzuki Kiitsu

A classic Rinpa school folding screen featuring indigo morning glories against a radiant gold-leaf background by Suzuki Kiitsu.

Suzuki Kiitsu, a prominent student of Sakai Hoitsu, produced this work during the late Edo period. The composition features a series of morning glory vines spreading across a six-panel folding screen. The artist employs a gold-leaf background, a technique characteristic of the Rinpa school, which creates a luminous surface that contrasts with the deep indigo of the flowers.

The morning glory, or asagao, is a subject of seasonal significance in Japanese art. Kiitsu captures the plant with a focus on the rhythmic movement of the vines as they traverse the panels. The leaves are rendered in varying shades of green, providing a structural counterpoint to the circular, saturated blue blossoms. The artist balances the density of the foliage with open areas of gold, allowing the eye to move across the screen without feeling crowded.

Technically, the work demonstrates the precision associated with Kiitsu. The outlines are clean, and the application of pigment shows a controlled hand. Unlike earlier, more stylised iterations of the Rinpa style, this piece exhibits a degree of naturalistic observation. The vines appear to grow organically across the surface, yet the arrangement remains carefully curated to fit the format of the folding screen. This piece is a representative example of the decorative tradition that defined the later years of the Rinpa movement, where the interplay between negative space and bold, graphic motifs was refined to a high degree of sophistication. The work remains a study in the application of colour against metallic grounds, showing how the artist manipulated light and shadow through the use of gold leaf and opaque mineral pigments.