Pine Trees (Shorin-zu byobu)

A pair of six-fold screens on which almost nothing is painted: a few pines loom and dissolve in fog, their needled masses fading to the palest grey, while bare paper alone becomes mist and space. Hasegawa Tohaku worked in wet ink without color, drawing on the atmosphere of Chinese Song painting and the hushed taste of the tea ceremony. He claimed artistic descent from Sesshu, whose splashed-ink landscape is also in this collection. Widely held to be the greatest ink painting Japan has produced.