2-744-091 - Heritage Art/Heritage Images

The Four Accomplishments, late 1500s. At first this scene appears a bit strange, if not bizarre: men, young and old, sit in a vast wilderness playing a board game or executing an ink painting. The furniture and ceramic wares are elegant, the attire is fashionably informal, and the young attendants outnumber the gentlemen of leisure. Clouds and mist roll through the landscape, whose bleakness suggests late fall or early spring, a chilly time to be outdoors engaged in what Westerners would call pastimes or hobbies. But we are viewing the past, a pictorial vision of a cultured gentleman’s ideal in classical East Asian history: the Four Accomplishments. This enduring Confucian theme embraces the arts of calligraphy, painting, music, and go (a game of strategy akin to chess), each of which is portrayed or suggested in this pair of 16th-century folding screens, or byøbu.