Footnotes

• 漢詩付四季草花図屏風　加藤半渓筆　六曲一双　紙本淡彩　明治時代（1888年）
  
  Essentially a set of 12 hanging scrolls, each representing one of the 12 months, mounted as a pair of folding screens, this remarkable series of paintings is a tour-de-force of the later Nanga style, dating from the period when increased access to Chinese painters in Nagasaki enabled Japanese artists to essay a more authentic interpretation of mainland artistic traditions. More than just a survey of seasonal flowers, the panels also constitute an anthology of Chinese poetry: while the poems on the first and last panels are otherwise unrecorded and may well be by Hankei himself, several of the others are by some of the most celebrated classical poets, including Li Deyu (787–850, second panel); Han Wo (844–923, third panel), Li Xianyong (late Tang, fourth panel), Han Yu (768–824, fifth panel), Bai Juyi (772–846, sixth panel), Su Shi (1037–1101), and four unidentified Ming and Song-dynasty poets.
  
  The poem by Li Xianyong translates as follows:
  
  雁門禅客吟春亭　牡丹独逞花中英　雙成膩臉偎雲屏　百般姿態因風生
  
  At Wild Goose Gate in spring a visiting monk chants in the guest wing
  Where only peonies blossom in solitary splendour
  Like a beauty's made-up face resting against a screen of clouds
  Taking on a hundred forms as they are blown by the wind
  
  Born in Osaka, Kato Hankei began painting with his father Katō Hanzan and uncle Katō Bokkei, then travelled to Nagasaki and studied with a Chinese painter, Xu Yutin (born 1824), who was there from 1861 to 1867. In 1876, he returned to his father's birthplace in Nagano Prefecture but spent much of his career touring the country as a guest painter, as this set of paintings attests. He died suddenly at his son's home in Tokyo.