Edo, 1761 -1828 · Rinpa d'Edo, money, rain and seasonal poetry

Under the summer downpour then in the autumn wind, herbs and flowers bend over the silver: Hoitsu makes the weather heard on the very reverse of the gods of Kôrin.

Sakai Hôitsu was born in 1761 into the family of lords of Himeji and died in 1828. Poet, calligrapher and painter, he studied several schools before devoting an essential part of his work to Ogata Kôrin. In 1815, for the centenary of Kôrin's death, he published the Kôrin hyakuzu, a collection of models which powerfully contributes to defining and transmitting the tradition today called Rinpa. Summer and autumn flowering plants, completed around 1821, originally formed the reverse of the screens of the God of Wind and the God of Thunder painted by Kôrin. On the reverse of Thunder, sudden rain bends summer plants and swells the watercourse; behind the Wind, autumn grasses and wild vine leaves are swept sideways. The silver leaf base, now patinated, replaces the descriptive space with fresh light. Hoitsu uses tarashikomi, pigments deposited in a still damp layer, but keeps shaded shapes which make each stem readable. This response to Kôrin is at the same time a tribute, a meteorological variation and a poem on fragility. The "Sakai Hoitsu" selection notably compares summer and autumn flowering plants. Its reading favors composition.

Hoitsu paints wind and rain without giving them body: it is the inclined grass, the upturned leaves and the cooled silver that make the air visible.