Painting blossomed in Japan during the Edo period (1615–1868) as artists daringly experimented with conventional styles. In this exhibition, more than forty examples of Edo-period paintings from the collection of Estelle P. Bender and her late husband T. Richard Fishbein—mostly gifts and promised gifts to The Met—help trace the development of the major schools and movements of this fascinating era.

Contemporary Japanese ceramics are juxtaposed with Edo-period paintings, while works in various formats and media from The Met collection provide context.

The celebration of the natural world serves as a unifying theme, and the intertwined relationship between poetry and the pictorial arts—so fundamental to Japanese tradition—is a particular focus of the exhibition.