File:Handscroll, painting, shunga (BM 2012,3021.1 1).jpg

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handscroll, painting, shunga   (Wikidata search (Cirrus search) Wikidata query (SPARQL)  Create new Wikidata item based on this file)
Title
handscroll, painting, shunga
Description
English: Painting, handscroll, shunga. Twelve erotic encounters, of which two have been interpolated by a later artist. Ink, colour, gold and silver pigment, and gold and silver leaf on paper. Unsigned.


The twelve scenes are described as follows:
1. A mature samurai and a youth embrace under a bed-quilt. A woman adjusts the bedding.
2. A couple make love standing in front of a screen painted with a bamboo grove. A second woman tugs the hair of the woman making love.
3. A woman guides her lover's penis as they make love against discarded robes.
4. A couple make love beneath a white robe.
5. A Buddhist monk and nun make love against discarded scarlet robes.
6. [Later interpolation] A courtier wearing eboshi hat makes love to a court woman against robes.
7. A couple embrace as they lie against discarded robes, she fondles his penis and he holds her foot.
8. An older man wearing eboshi court hat makes and amorous advance to a naked court woman.
9. [Later interpolation] A couple make love, naked except for his scarlet loincloth.
10. Courtiers, still largely dressed, make love. His robe has a design of maple leaves.
11. A mature couple make love playfully with her scarlet sash tied around both their necks.


12. A couple making love are interrupted by a pointing child. He wears a hunting cap.
Date 17thC(early)
Medium paper
Dimensions
Height: 31.70 centimetres (each scene)
Width: 36.80 centimetres (each scene (maximum))
Width: 34 centimetres (each scene (minimum))
institution QS:P195,Q6373
Current location
Asia
Accession number
2012,3021.1
Notes Much mystery still surrounds the painted shunga handscrolls of the seventeenth century, including a number which are presumed to date from before printed erotic books began to appear in the 1650s. By far the largest group so far introduced are the forty-five handscrolls, including fragments, published by ukiyo-e scholar Richard Lane in 1979.1 Of these, one group of fragments, dated 1604, is attributed to Hasegawa So-taku (d. 1611?);2 one hanging-scroll painting by Iwasa Katsushige is dated 1647;3 and another incomplete handscroll has the signature of Kano To - un (1625–94).4 Otherwise, all the works are unsigned and Lane classifies them using painting-school names – Kano, Tosa, genre, early ukiyo-e, etc. – sometimes applied in combination. The present scroll is a work of great tenderness and delicacy, and was completed using high-quality pigments, sometimes painted over areas of gold-leaf. The dense clouds of finely cut gold- and silver-leaf in the background are demonstrably original to the scroll. Clearly this is a work created for a highranking, wealthy patron. Its value is further heightened by the fact that the figure style can be attributed with confidence to a painter of the leading Kano school, working in Kyoto in the early seventeenth century, in the lineage of the great Kano Eitoku (1543–90) and his sons Mitsunobu (1565–1608) and Takanobu (1571–1618). This is particularly apparent in the faces of some of the male protagonists, with their prominent, high-ridged noses and generally noble features. One feature of early shunga handscrolls is that particular erotic scenarios are repeated with only minor variation, irrespective of the school affiliation of the artist. Painters seem to draw from a common pool of compositions, doubtless copying from earlier, now lost versions. In the present scroll, scenes such as the couple making love standing up, who are interrupted by a second women (picture two; compare Clark et al 2013, p. 72, fig. 9), and the scene of love games involving a sash tied around the lovers’ necks (Clark et al 2013, no. 11) are also found in several handscrolls published by Lane in 1979. Two of the twelve scenes in the scroll (Clark et al 2013, nos. 6 and 9) have been interpolated by a later artist working in a simpler style. This reaffirms the talismanic belief that a shunga handscroll must have twelve scenes to be complete. [TC]
Source/Photographer https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/A_2012-3021-1
Permission
(Reusing this file)		 © The Trustees of the British Museum, released as CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
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