Object data
nishikie, with metallic pigments
height 212 mm × width 189 mm
Yashima Gakutei
Seated Woman with Pipe
Japan, Japan, Japan, c. 1828
Provenance
…; 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-1991-551
Credit line: Gift of J.H.W. Goslings, Epse
Copyright: Public domain
Context
This surimono is mostly seen as one of four Meiji-period (1868-1912) facsimiles (cf. RP-P-1995-288). This is one of a few originals recorded.2 Other original impressions are recorded in the Achenbach Foundation, San Francisco; the Art Institute of Chicago; the Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge; and the Rietberg Museum, Zurich.
The artist
Yashima Gakutei (1786?-1868), a pupil of Totoya Hokkei, was also strongly influenced by Katsushika Hokusai. He used the art-names Harunobu, Sadaoka and Yashima. In addition to his designs for surimono and kyoka collections - he was probably the most prolific designer in this genre – he was also a poet and writer as well as a great Sinologist.
Entry
A seated woman, her left hand resting on a long pipe. On her kimono a stag among flowers.
The God Jurojin, Juro, from the series A Parody on the Seven Gods of Good Fortune, Mitate shichifukujin.
The stag and the staff (represented here by the pipe the woman is holding) to which a scroll is tied are the usual attributes of the popular God of Fortune, Jurojin.
Two poems by Ryusanro Okikaze and Yoshinoya Futaba [also Rokudaen or Jushoken Futaba, a judge of the Gogawa, later also the owner of a brothel in the New Yoshiwara, d. 1858].3
The first poem speaks of 'the First Writing of the New Year when the snow melts on the mountains in the south'.
Issued by the Shipporen
Signature reading: Gakutei
Literature
M. Forrer, Surimono in the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, Leiden 2013, no. 461
Citation
M. Forrer, 2013, 'Yashima Gakutei, Seated Woman with Pipe, Japan, c. 1828', in Surimono from the Goslings Collection in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.377894
(accessed 20 September 2024 21:15:33).