Kano Yasunobu was a member of the Kano school - the most powerful and influential of Japan's painting schools. Artists in this school were admired for their skill in combining the line and brushwork of Chinese ink painting with the decorative use of colour and gold pigment of the Japanese yamato-e tradition.

These screens depict birds and flowers of the four seasons. The seasons and seasonal change are favourite subjects, frequently celebrated in Japanese painting for their ability to stir sentiments of both pleasure and regret, in the beauties of nature and their frailty and transience, respectively. Kano's work follows the conventional Japanese depiction of seasonal change by including all four seasons within a singular landscape and spanning both screens. In doing so, he underscores both constancy and inevitable change in the natural world.

Ruth McDougall, 2010.