Indigo flowers cross a gold ground while vines pass over the folds into the next panel. Suzuki Kiitsu’s Morning Glories joins two six-panel screens, creating a garden almost 7.6 metres wide from a single botanical motif. No figures or supports appear, yet the angled vines reveal a garden shaped by human hands. Even the open gold carries the force of growth. Repetition by an artist trained in dyeing joins textile pattern and plant time within one room.
Almost 7.6 metres across
The Metropolitan Museum of Art dates the work to the early 19th century and records it as a pair of six-panel screens in ink, colour and gold leaf on paper. Each screen measures 178.3 by 379.7 centimetres, making twelve panels in all.
The composition moves from right to left. Vines on both screens reach towards the centre, turning separate clusters of flowers into one continuous growth.
Vines remain, the trellis disappears
No figure or building appears. Yet the diagonal fall of the vines and their changes of direction suggest a trellis and the hand that trained the plant through a garden.
The Met connects this absence to the Rinpa device known as rusu moyō. Because the garden itself is omitted, the gold between the leaves begins to act like a path and a pocket of air.
Kiitsu trained as a textile dyer before studying with Sakai Hōitsu. Thick pigments on gold leaf and the repeated rhythm of flowers and leaves give the screens a flat, patterned force close to textile design.
The blue is never singular
The blossoms range from deep indigo to brighter blue. The leaves also avoid a single green, changing in tone and direction as they support the movement of the vine.
Morning glory is a common name used for more than one plant. Kew Science records the familiar Ipomoea nil as a twining annual with three-lobed leaves and blue, funnel-shaped flowers. The painted plant cannot be fixed to species from the image alone, but vine, divided leaf and opening bloom form its structure.
The original is not currently on display. The museum’s open image allows the twelve panels to be taken in together, then examined fold by fold for changes in vine direction and flower colour.
A screen becomes an indoor garden
Rinpa screens created intimate areas within large reception rooms and could rotate with the seasons. Morning glories were not background decoration; they changed the scale and season of an interior.
Following the vine from the right edge to the centre reveals alternating density and open gold. The plant’s vigour comes as much from the intervals as from the number of flowers.
No person stands in Kiitsu’s garden. Vines and blue flowers crossing twelve panels bring the unseen trellis, human care and a season turning from summer towards autumn into the room.