Pair of byobu or folding screens in six panels, painted on silk in mineral pigments, gofun or clam shell gesso and sumi ink, with a scene of geese swimming among water lilies. Signed and dated in the lower left corner of the left hand screen: Kanoe Saru Aki Koyo or Autumn of the Year of the Monkey (1920), and sealed: Koyo; and sealed on the lower right of the right hand screen: Koyo (Omura Koyo, 1891 – 1983). The mounts of black lacquer with chased and gilt silver hardware. Taisho 9 or 1920.

Born in Tanegoro in Hiroshima Prefecture, Omura Koyo graduated in 1911 from the Painting Department of the Kyoto Municipal School of Arts and Crafts (Kyoto Shiritsu Bijutsu Kogei Gakko). That same year came his first acceptance at a government sponsored exhibition with the 5th Bunten, where he won a certificate of merit. In 1914 Koyo graduated from the Kyoto Municipal School of Painting (Kyoto Shiritsu Kaiga Senmon Gakko) at the top of his class, and began studying under Takeuchi Seiho. In 1921 Koyo held his first one-man show at Shirokiya in Osaka. From 1912 until the War he showed almost continuously at the Bunten, Teiten, Shin-Bunten, and Hoshukuten, winning prizes for his work repeatedly. He was granted mukansa or non-vetted status by the mid 1930s. After the War Koyo returned to the government sponsored exhibitions with the 10th Nitten in 1954. He held a one-man show at the Hankyu department store in Osaka in 1964, and in 1974 a commemorative exhibition celebrating his painting career of sixty years was held at the same venue. In 1976 a retrospective was held of Koyo’s work at the Kyoto Prefectural Center for Arts and Culture (Kyoto Furitsu Bunka Geijutsukaikan), and another followed in 1984 (the year after his death) at the Fukuyama Castle Museum in Fukuyama.

Painted on a warm gold ground, these impressionist studies of water lilies and swimming geese convey the calm of a summer afternoon. Omura Koyo shadows the bank of the pond with a mixture of sumi ink and faint green. Water plants in masses of layered blues and greens weight the composition in the left-hand screen; the white geese balancing them on the right. A counterpoint of green lily pads and blushing pink blossoms sweep in an upward arc across both screens. Light washes of sumi sketch in the surface of the water, and darken to suggest the shadows of the swimming geese. Their white reflections glaze the water beneath them, and a similar haze of green echoes the water plants.