page_title: Kusumi Morikage
section_title: Family Enjoying the Evening Cool
hierarchical_section_title: Kusumi Morikage / Notable Works / Family Enjoying the Evening Cool
caption_attribution_description: English: Family enjoying the evening cool
context_page_description: Kusumi Morikage was a Japanese painter of the Edo period. He came from Kaga Province, the centre of the lands of the Maeda clan. He fell afoul of his teacher, Kanō Tan'yū, and became the Maeda clan's official painter. His sympathy for farmers and the poor people of the Edo period is reflected in his works.
  His daughter, Kiyohara Yukinobu, was also an artist, one of the few female painters of the Edo period.
context_section_description: Family Enjoying the Evening Cool is Morikage’s most notable folding screen painting as it indicates that Morikage depicted happiness in a family structure that was not common at the time. The nuclear family depicted in this painting - a husband, wife and child - reflects major rural familial changes that occurred in the beginning of the seventeenth century. Considered a national treasure, this painting illustrates a peasant family using a combination of fine brushwork, rough brush strokes as well as dilute ink. 
  Additionally, other than visualising a unique take on rural and familial structures in Edo Japan, it is also proposed that Morikage was inspired by a waka poem by the poet Kinoshita Katsutoshi (1569 - 1649), otherwise known by his pen name, Chōshōshi. Another study observes that the painting is constructed with ‘eremitic recluse ideas that would have been learned in a Chinese style education’, found in motifs such as the gourd. The overall significance of this piece in rendering a peaceful peasant family amidst agricultural crisis prompted its selection for the Tokyo National Museum exhibition in 2001.
caption: Family Enjoying the Evening Cool
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