Object data
nishikie, on crêped ground
height 106 mm × width 169 mm
anonymous
Japan, Japan, 1798
nishikie, on crêped ground
height 106 mm × width 169 mm
…; purchased from the dealer Hotei Japanese Prints, Leiden, by J.H.W. Goslings (1943-2011), Epse, near Deventer, 1986;1 by whom donated to the museum, 1991
Object number: RP-P-1991-619
Credit line: Gift of J.H.W. Goslings, Epse
Copyright: Public domain
A temple servant shouldering a staff of paper slips, gohei, and wearing a call cap leads a white horse by the reins past a blossoming plum tree surrounded by a wooden fence. The horse is covered with two ceremonial blankets - one with the widely used decoration of three commas, mitsu tomoe - and its mane is tied in small tufts.
White horses, often considered sacred, were called shinme. Leading a shinme around the Sensoji Temple in Asakusa, Edo, was a sacred annual custom, and this print may refer to it.
The paper of the print has been created to imitate silk, a special effect occasionally used on surimono of the late 1790s and early 1800s (cf. RP-P-1967-1205, RP-P-1999-245, RP-P-1991-684, RP-P-1999-239, RP-P-1960-275).
Three poems by Shikaku Shimendo, Kozuka Torifune and Kinjuan Uma-. The name of the last poet is preceded by a small flower bud, probably his personal emblem.
Issued by the poets
Unsigned
M. Forrer, Surimono in the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, Leiden 2013, no. 21
M. Forrer, 2013, 'anonymous, Temple Servant Leading a White Horse, Japan, 1798', in Surimono from the Goslings Collection in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.422427
(accessed 13 November 2024 20:23:55).