Object data
nishikie, with metallic pigments
height 197 mm × width 176 mm
Katsukawa Shuntei
Woman Seated by a Stag
Japan, Japan, Japan, Japan, c. 1820
Inscriptions
- collector's mark, verso, stamped
Provenance
…; collection C.J.F.J. Maassen (1895-?), Amsterdam;…; purchased from the dealer Hotei Japanese Prints, Leiden, by J.H.W. Goslings (1943-2011), Epse, near Deventer, 1984;1 by whom donated to the museum, 1991
Object number: RP-P-1991-546
Credit line: Gift of J.H.W. Goslings, Epse
Copyright: Public domain
The artist
Katsukawa Shuntei (1770–1820), a follower of Katsukawa Shunei, worked with a wide range of subjects.
Entry
A Woman pauses under a plum tree to smoke a pipe as a stag passes by in a landscape with a stream. Next to her a few bundles of wood she has gathered.
Print from the series The Seven Gods of Good Fortune for the Hanagasaren, Hanagasaren shichifukujin.
Although in all respects a typical Oharame - women from Ohara, north of Kyoto, who made a living by gathering firewood - the stag identifies her as a representation of the God Jurojin, one the Seven Gods of Fortune whose emblems are a stag and a staff with a scroll tied to it. The woman’s scarf has a drum, the emblem of the poetry club, in reserve.
Three poems by Chifune Atsumaru [probably not identical to Kikin no Atsumaru (d. 1829), who used many different names but was mostly associated with the Gogawa],2 Horeisha Sakunari and Yamato Watamori [1795-1849, a member of the Taikogawa and later of the Gogawa].3.
None of the poems allude to Jurojin, focusing instead on the Oharame and the usual imagery.
Issued by the Hanagasaren, a subdivision of the Taikogawa
Signature reading: Shokyuko Shuntei ga
Literature
M. Forrer, Surimono in the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, Leiden 2013, no. 496
Citation
M. Forrer, 2013, 'Katsukawa Shuntei, Woman Seated by a Stag, Japan, c. 1820', in Surimono from the Goslings Collection in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.435461
(accessed 23 September 2024 09:21:41).