Pine Trees in the Snow

A great pine heavy with snow is painted on each of the left and right screens, with snow piled thickly on the branches. A faint touch of gold is laid in the background, evoking the clear light of a snowy morning. The trunks and needles of the pines are painted in gradations of ink, conveying how the branches bend under the weight of snow. No figures or buildings are painted, and the large picture is built from pines and snow alone.

White paint is not applied to the snowy areas. By leaving the white of the paper ground and painting around it in ink and pale color, the shape of the snow is made to emerge. The gold sunago (finely powdered gold leaf) scattered in the lower part glitters like powder snow drifting down.

Maruyama Okyo was a painter active in eighteenth-century Kyoto who valued shasei, painting by closely observing the real thing. This work is thought to have been painted for the Mitsui family, who were Okyo's patrons. It is a representative work of Okyo, combining a sense of solid form with decorativeness.

This work was handed down in the Kita Mitsui family and has been protected through the end of the shogunate, the Meiji Restoration, earthquakes and war. It is now owned by the Mitsui Bunko and housed in the Mitsui Memorial Museum in Nihonbashi, Tokyo. It was designated a National Treasure in 1952.