In front of a slightly darkened background numerous fireflies are shown flying, and around a slanted bamboo stick coils the vine of the moonflower, or “evening faces.” The use of the tarashikomi wet-in-wet technique for the leaves firmly positions the work within the Rimpa style. The sluggish shapes of the leaves contrast curiously with the nimble sense of movement of the vine.

The subject matter of evening faces (yugao, also: moonflower) is not typical for Sakai Hoitsu, yet a few versions are known. Evening Faces on a Fan (private collection), is an example where the artist assembled motifs of the vines of the plant on fan-shaped paper, pasted onto a screen. Of course, this alludes to the corresponding Chapter Four of the Tale of Genji, titled Evening Faces (or The Twilight Beauty, depending on the translation). In this chapter, the protagonist Genji has his servant investigate a house overgrown with evening faces. The lady of the house, also named Yugao, notices this attention and promptly composes a poem on a fan. She places a flower of evening faces on the fan and lets her maid bring it to Genji. The above mentioned painting evocative of that scene is included in Ikeda Koson’s Mirror of Genuine Works by Priest Hoitsu, where it represents the sixth months of the Pictures of the Twelve Months. In another version of Hoitsu’s Pictures of the Twelve Months (private collection) of the Kansei era (1789–1801), Evening Faces on a Round Fan represents the sixth month in a set of eleven sheets. By replacing the ogi style fan with a round fan (uchiwa), the painter de-emphasized the atmosphere of the ancient courtly literature but instead evokes a scenery of evening chill of his own time.

Further works by Hoitsu, namely the folding screen Birds and Flowers of the Twelve Months (Kosetsu Museum of Art) and Flowers of the Twelve Months (private collection) also employ evening faces for the sixth month, following the conventions of the previous two works. Yet here the artist replaces the cut vines with vines hanging from the plant and omits the fan shape and literary allusions to the Tale of Genji. The present hanging scroll resembles Hoitsu’s screen painting. The descending and rising vines correspond as well as the motifs of the swarming fireflies in front of a subdued background. A main difference is that in this scroll the painter includes part of a bamboo trellis that supports the plant. Such details, of course, evoke works such as Kusumi Morikage’s two-panel screen Cooling Off in the Evening (Tokyo National Museum), showing a family under a trellis with flowering evening faces. Morikage’s screen is based on a poem by the poet Kinoshita Choshoshi in which the flowers feature as an important motif. Similar works include Enjoying the Evening Cool under a Gourd Trellis, a painting by ukiyo-e artist Utagawa Toyohiro (Metropolitan Museum of Art) which also shows parts of the trellis. Such correspondences are no coincidence, as Hoitsu in his earlier years studied under Utagawa Toyoharu. Toyohiro also was a disciple of Toyoharu and therefore a fellow student with Hoitsu.

Sakai Hoitsu (painter; 1761–1828)
After Tawaraya Sotatsu and Ogata Korin, the third leading master of the Rimpa school. Born into the influential Sakai family, the daimyo of Himeji domain, Hoitsu studied shasei (sketching from life) with So Shiseki and combined painting techniques from the Kano, Tosa, and Maruyama-Shijo schools. In the early 19th century, he was responsible for a revival of interest in the art of Ogata Korin. Hoitsu added emotional nuance and realistic detail to the school’s traditional decorativeness.