Folding Screen with Tale of Sagoromo (Sagoromo Monogatari) Illustrations

This six-part folding screen with 36 glued albums in the shikishi format (19.5 x 17.6 cm) was painted by an anonymous Tosa school artist after the lyrical four-volume novel The Tale of Sagoromo (Sagoromo monogatari) written by lady-in-waiting Senji in the second half of the 11th century. The book describes the romances of Sagoromo, a member of the palace guard, who later becomes its chief, focusing on his unrequited love for his cousin, Princess Genji. Narrative-type folding screens with glued-on minor scenes were usually used in pairs to divide Japanese palace interiors. This screen from the National Gallery collections, too, had a counterpart (with scenes from The Tale of Prince Genji), which was donated to the Czechoslovak state by Baron Satsuma Jirōhachi in 1938, but destroyed in a fire at the chateau in Benešov nad Ploučnicí in 1969.