Folding Screen for Tea Ceremony with Six Bird-and-Flower Paintings

Shibata Zeshin

The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Rectangular folding screen with six panels. The screen has dark brown frame. The background of the screen is beige with a subtle grid-like pattern resembling paper or fabric texture. Six beige rectangular or circular shapes with gold and colored designs are painted on the screen. The designs depict flowers and birds. The leftmost design is circular, the second and third from the left are square, and the remaining three are rectangular. The rectangular panels are arranged in pairs of two with a seam down the middle. The overall color palette includes shades of beige, gold, brown, black, and red.