Pine Trees Screen (Shōrin-zu byōbu)

Hasegawa Tōhaku painted a pair of six-panel folding screens showing pine trees in the mist. There is no mist. The mist is the paper — untouched, blank silk between the ink- brushed trees. Everything you see as fog is the absence of paint. Tōhaku was reacting against the gold-leaf grandeur of his contemporary Kanō Eitoku, and he invented an almost minimalist ink monochrome tradition. The screens are 156 cm × 347 cm. They are a designated National Treasure of Japan and rarely shown in public. Now at Tokyo National Museum, Tokyo @tokyonationalmuseum