Red and White Plum Blossoms

A stylized band of dark, swirling water pours down the centre between two gold screens; a young white-blossomed plum leans in from the left, an older red-blossomed one from the right, their branches reaching toward each other across the current. Korin flattens everything into pattern, the water an abstract arabesque of eddies, the trunks mottled by a wet pooled-ink technique, yet the whole breathes spring. It is the masterpiece of the Rinpa school, whose founding Wind and Thunder Gods by Sotatsu are also in this collection.