Object data
nishikie, with metallic pigments and blindprinting
height 130 mm × width 181 mm
Utagawa Toyokuni (I)
Woman Carrying a Wooden Box
Japan, Japan, c. 1810 - c. 1815
Provenance
…; purchased from the dealer C.P.J. van der Peet Japanese Prints, Amsterdam, by J.H.W. Goslings (1943-2011), Epse, near Deventer, 1993;1 by whom donated to the museum, 1995
Object number: RP-P-1995-290
Credit line: Gift of J.H.W. Goslings, Epse
Copyright: Public domain
The artist
Utagawa Toyokuni (1769-1825) was a pupil of Utagawa Toyoharu, who first aspired to a career as a designer of prints of beautiful women, bijinga, and then focused on the world of kabuki theatre. He was one of the very few 18th-century designers who enjoyed success well into the next century.
Entry
A woman carries a wooden box, tied closed with a cloth ribbon, containing a set of playing cards for the memory game on the theme of the 'Hundred Poems' anthology. A folding screen at right. A book can be seen on the floor at left in the room beyond the open sliding doors.
The book lying on the floor is the anthology A Hundred Poems by a Hundred Poets, Hyakunin isshu, compiled by Fujiwara Teika in 1235, the origin of the card game in the box.
One poem by Jingairo Kiyosumi [1786-1834, the son of Rokujuen Yadoya no Meshimori and a judge of the Gogawa].2
Although the lady is carrying the cards in the box, the poem speaks of 'the pattern formed by the cards when they are lined up on the floor', connecting this with ya no ji musubi, a special method of tying a woman's obi, so that it looks like the syllable 'ya'.
Issued by the poet
Signature reading: Toyokuni ga, with Toshidama ring
Literature
M. Forrer, Surimono in the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, Leiden 2013, no. 46
Citation
M. Forrer, 2013, 'Utagawa (I) Toyokuni, Woman Carrying a Wooden Box, Japan, c. 1810 - c. 1815', in Surimono from the Goslings Collection in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.318706
(accessed 23 November 2024 18:24:01).