Album of Birds and Flowers and Other Subjects
This is an album of Japanese paintings by Tosa Mitsunari, 1647-1710, a Tosa-school painter working in Japan for collectors of ink and colour painting. The pictures are small leaves painted in muted ochre, grey and gold tones, with quail, grasses and flowering plants set in soft gold-flecked ground. A designer could take the restrained palette, the sparse compositions with much empty space, and the fine brushwork on plant stems and feathers.
