Minneapolis Institute of Art

Barley Field

Japan

Date

early 17th century

Medium

Six-panel folding screen, ink, color, and silver on gilded paper

Department

Asian Art

Institution

Minneapolis Institute of Art

A sea of barley with green stalks and white spikes fills this screen. The golden clouds, a typical feature of Japanese screens, meets the edge of the field along a curved line, giving the impression that the heads of barley are touching the sky. In Japan, farmers paired barley and rice for multiple cropping. After the rice was harvested in autumn, they grew barley in the same fields and reaped them in the early summer in preparation for the rice planting to begin the cycle again. Because the spikes here are white while the stalks are green, the barley depicted are likely in the process of maturing, representing early summer. In Japanese painting, plants often indicated a season or specific time of year. Asia

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