File:Print, mitate-e (BM 1937,0710,0.34 1).jpg
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Captions
Captions
Summary
[edit]print, mitate-e
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| Title |
print, mitate-e |
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| Description |
English: Colour woodblock chuban print. Courtesan seated in front of free-standing screen painted with view of Mt Fuji and Miho-no-Matsubara, holding pipe in one hand; a parody of 'Monk Saigyo Gazing at Mt Fuji'. |
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| Depicted people | Representation of: Saigyō Hōshi (西行法師) | |||||||||||||||||||||||
| Date | between 1765 and 1770 | |||||||||||||||||||||||
| Medium | paper | |||||||||||||||||||||||
| Dimensions |
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| Collection |
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| Current location |
Asia |
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| Accession number |
1937,0710,0.34 |
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| Notes |
Clark 2001 The courtesan, identified as such by her sash ('obi') tied at the front, sits admiring a free-standing screen ('tsuitate') painted with a view of Mt Fuji and Miho no Matsubara. She leans back on one hand, as if overwhelmed by the view, and in fact this is a 'parody picture' ('mitate-e') which reworks the familiar subject 'Monk Saigyo Gazing at Mt Fuji' ('Fuji-mi Saigyo'). Saigyo was the pen-name of Sato Norikiyo (1118-90), a warrior in the service of Emperor Toba, who in 1140 took religious vows and left his family at court to travel the country and compose some of the greatest 'waka' poetry in the Japanese language. One common later depiction of an episode from Saigyo's life, not apparently deriving from sources close to his period, shows him as an aged man in monk's black robes, with walking stick and travelling hat, pausing on his journeying to gaze in wonder at Mt Fuji (cat. 32). This is the scene parodied here, the courtesan's long pipe suggesting Saigyo's stick. Woodblock prints with a full range of printed colours - the so-called 'brocade pictures' ('nishiki-e') - were first designed in large numbers in 1765 by the Ukiyo-e artist Suzuki Harunobu. About one hundred designs by him from this year are known. They were commissioned by competing groups of 'haikai' poets led by wealthy samurai amateurs such as Okubo Jinshiro Tadanobu (pen-name Kyosen, 1721-77) to be exchanged privately at parties, some probably held in celebration of the opening of a new government observatory. Astronomical observations were fundamental to fixing the sequence of 'long' (thirty-day) and 'short' (twenty-nine-day) months in the lunar calendar each year. This design was first issued with a hidden inscription scattered among the white pattern on the woman's purple surcoat ('uchikake'), which read 'Cock year, 2nd year of Meiwa [1765]' ('Meiwa ni kinoto tori'), and the numbers of the long months for 1765 - 2, 3, 5, 6, 8, 10 - hidden in the squares of her sash. The artist's signature 'Suzuki Harunobu ga' appeared on the screen and the name of the block carver 'Takahashi Rosen koku' was printed in the bottom left-hand corner ('Ukiyo-e shitka suppl. vol. 1: Bosuton Bijutsukan' (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston), 1982, no. 13 (commentary by David Waterhouse)). All these were carved out of the blocks before the British Museum impression was taken, possibly several years after the original edition. The impression from the first edition in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston also has considerable differences in the colour-scheme, apparent even though the Boston print is somewhat faded: a grey ground, brown sky above Fuji and grey gradation used among the sand-coloured slopes of the mountain. The ground of the British Museum impression looks to be a faded day-flower blue ('tsuyu-gusa') which may have been mixed with a lead white, hence the present smudges of black tarnish. |
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| Source/Photographer | https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/A_1937-0710-0-34 | |||||||||||||||||||||||
| Permission (Reusing this file) |
© The Trustees of the British Museum, released as CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 | |||||||||||||||||||||||
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