Object data
nishikie
height 140 mm × width 106 mm
Kubota Shunman
A Lady and Servant by a Waterfall
Japan, Japan, 1799
Provenance
…; purchased from the dealer Hotei Japanese Prints, Leiden, by J.H.W. Goslings (1943-2011), Epse, near Deventer, 1989;1 by whom donated to the museum, 1991
Object number: RP-P-1991-666
Credit line: Gift of J.H.W. Goslings, Epse
Copyright: Public domain
The artist
Kubota Shunman (1757-1820), popularly called Kubo Shunman, was a pupil of Kitao Shigemasa who was also strongly influenced by Torii Kiyonaga and Katsukawa Shuncho. He created an attractive blend of the various ideals of feminine beauty prevalent in his time. He also used the art name Shosado. In addition to designing prints and making paintings, he was a poet and a writer and ran a studio that produced surimono. It was probably in this capacity that he introduced some of the innovations of the mid-Bunka period (1809-13), exploring the concept of large series of shikishiban surimono.
Entry
A lady wearing a kimono as a veil over her head and followed by a servant carrying a wrapped package pauses to look at two streams of water trickling from holes in a stone wall, part of a Shinto shrine above the wall. The hills in the background overgrown with trees.
The lady's kimono is decorated with a down of hares, apparently unconnected to the year for which the print was issued. The print is dated top left 'Year of the Goat', Tsuchinoto hitsuji no toshi, i.e., 1799.
One poem by Yamabuki Sewake.
The poem likens the 'white threads of the trickling water' to 'the strands of mist'.
Issued by the poet
Seal reading: Shunman
Literature
M. Forrer, Surimono in the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, Leiden 2013, no. 64
Citation
M. Forrer, 2013, 'Kubota Shunman, A Lady and Servant by a Waterfall, Japan, 1799', in Surimono from the Goslings Collection in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.422434
(accessed 24 November 2024 02:56:27).