Immortals and Lofty Scholars

These paintings are mounted as standing screens, but the visible door-handle marks indicate that they were originally mounted as sliding doors. If we set the two screens side-by-side, as they would have been as sliding-door panels, the figures on the right-hand side of the scene look upwards at something outside the screen. A fairy may have been flying into the sky in the next door panel. Some art historians believe that these paintings came from the sliding door panels of a sub-temple of Kenninji temple, though this has not been proved. The brush stokes and depiction of facial features are quite similar to those of the Tokyo National Museum's Kyoyu and Soho (Hermits Xuyou and Chaofu) by Kano Eitoku, suggesting that this may also be Eitoku's work. This pair of screens has a unsurpassed dramatic tension that makes them true masterpieces of Momoyama ink painting.

— Museum description: Kyoto National Museum (CC BY 4.0), via ColBase / Japan Search.