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Beauty A Warbler On A Plum Tree Settei Analysis

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Beauty a Warbler on a Plum Tree
Tsukioka Settei's, Beauty a Warbler on a Plum Tree, originated in Japan around 1710 to 1786. The artwork is a painting hung on a textile scroll, featuring ink and color on silk. The work is featured on the third floor in the Pavilion for Japanese Art at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, alongside other scrolls by Settei. The scroll portrays a beautiful woman in traditional Japanese dress, peeking from behind a screen called a shoji screen, to admire a small bird called a Warbler, perched on a plum blossom tree. The work also incorporates an inscription added by Settei, which is a couplet from the Chinese poet Wang Wei (c. 701- c. 761). The couplet reads,
I have already seen the winter plum …show more content…

The picture lays flat, with the primary shape being the wall the woman is peeking behind. The vertical placement of the elements and aid the creation of implied depth. The work features both organic and geometric shapes. The positive and organic shapes are the woman, the Warbler, and the plum blossom tree; while the negative and geometric shapes are the shoji screen and the fence. We see the horizon line where the wall meets the ground; Settei created pictorial depth by overlapping the wall and the plum blossom tree, and by partially placing the woman's kimono in front of the wall. The tree is positioned closer to us and also lower on the scroll. The blank space before the woman's feet appears flat and parallel to the picture plane. Settei's painting is drawn gently, with little to no hard lines outside of the tree, adding to the atmosphere of the work. My subjective impression is that the artist was trying to display that the woman was longing. The way she is positioned/standing in the door make her appear to be solemn and lonely. Perhaps the woman is longing to be somewhere else, and she is admiring the Warbler's ability to do so. My impression is also that Settei positioned the plum blossom in front of the other figures to create atmospheric depth as if one is looking at the scene from a …show more content…

The work features mostly cool colors and black for contrast. Settei utilized warm colors for the plum blossom tree and the kimono, which appear heavier than the cool colors. The backdrop color is a cool orange, and the woman's kimono is black and filled with contrasting colors that are complementary – red, green, and blue. The kimono also features white space to provide even more contrast and to provide extravagant detailing true to real kimono style. These colors stand boldly against the cool white color of the woman's skin. The warm brown color of the plum blossom tree and the intense coloring of the kimono force the eye to focus more on the positive figures. The plum blossoms themselves feature a light violet color, adding to the delicacy of the flower. The Warbler, which is a positive figure, is somewhat lost by color -- the value of the bird is faint and hard to read. My subjective impression on the coloring of the picture is that Settei used color purposefully. When I first viewed the work, my eye was focused mostly on the kimono and the plum blossom tree. It was not until after a few minutes I realized the bird was even there. These elements of color contributed to how I viewed the work. The colors triggered an emotional response in that the work which appears to be set at the beginning of Spring, because of the blooming light violet blossoms, adding to what feels like the end of a melancholy

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