Kawakami Tōkai
Late Edo period-Meiji era (19th century)
Homma Museum of Art Collection
Kawakami Tōkai (1827-1881) was a literati painter, known as a pioneer in early modern Japanese Western-style painting. He also put in great effort to nurture the next generation of Japanese painters, and created numerous paintings of flower petals with a major sense of influence from the style of Southern Chinese painting.
This painting portrays the “nine autumnal flowers”: fragrant olive, cotton rose, hardy begonia, Asiatic dayflower, dianthus, ragged robin, water pepper, Joseph’s coat, and aster microcephalus.