Object data
nishikie, with traces of metallic pigments
height 384 mm × width 500 mm
Konsai
Woman Playing the Flute
Japan, c. 1840 - c. 1850
Provenance
…; purchased from the dealer Johannes Marcus (Kunsthandel Magdalena Sothmann), Amsterdam, by J.H.W. Goslings (1943-2011), Epse, near Deventer, c. 1983;1 by whom donated to the museum, 1991
Object number: RP-P-1991-662
Credit line: Gift of J.H.W. Goslings, Epse
Copyright: Public domain
The artist
Konsai was an occasional amateur designer.
Entry
A lady dressed in Chinese clothing and with wings on her back lands in a pine tree. She is playing the flute.
This scene illustrates the legend of The Feather Robe, Hagoromo, also made into a No play, common in various East-Asian countries. It tells of a Buddhist angel who descended at the pine beach of Miho no Matsubara and took off her feather robe, which was found by a passing fisherman who took it. The angel asked for it back, as she could not fly back to heaven without it. The fisherman returned it on the condition that she performed a dance for him, which she did before returning home.
The design seems to have been copied directly after a shikishiban surimono by Hokusai, signed Hokusai, 'changed his name to', aratame Iitsu hitsu, illustrated in Polster.2 That design does not include the pine tree seen here.
Yokonagaban surimono such as this, with haiku poems, were probably produced for the Kansai market (the area around Kyoto and Osaka), and were issued from around the mid-19th century, but they are quite difficult to date precisely.
Numerous haiku poems to the left and on the overleaf.
Issued by an unidentified group of haiku poets
Signature reading: Konsai hitsu
Literature
M. Forrer, Surimono in the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, Leiden 2013, no. 179
Citation
M. Forrer, 2013, 'Konsai, Woman Playing the Flute, Japan, c. 1840 - c. 1850', in Surimono from the Goslings Collection in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.422479
(accessed 23 November 2024 18:17:15).