Object data
nishikie, on crêped ground
height 106 mm × width 169 mm
anonymous
Temple Servant Leading a White Horse
Japan, Japan, 1798
Provenance
…; 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
Entry
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
Literature
M. Forrer, Surimono in the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, Leiden 2013, no. 21
Citation
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 23 November 2024 10:18:22).