Object data
nishikie, with metallic pigments and embossing
height 207 mm × width 186 mm
Keisai Eisen
A Female Monkey Trainer
Japan, Japan, Japan, 1824
Inscriptions
- collector's mark, verso, stamped
Provenance
…; collection Gerhard Pulverer, Cologne (collector's mark);…; purchased from the dealer Hotei Japanese Prints, Leiden, by J.H.W. Goslings (1943-2011), Epse, near Deventer, 1985;1 by whom donated to the museum, 1991
Object number: RP-P-1991-571
Credit line: Gift of J.H.W. Goslings, Epse
Copyright: Public domain
The artist
Keisai Eisen (1791-1848) was a follower of Kikugawa Eizan, who found his own style and successfully developed a Bunsei period ideal of feminine beauty. He was also important as a writer, under the name Mumeio, updating the Ukiyoe ruiko, the first chronicle of the ukiyoe tradition.
Entry
A female monkey trainer watching her monkey perform the sanbaso dance, a standing screen, tsuitate, behind her. On the screen a painting of the rising sun and pines.
The emblem of one of the poets - probably the first, within a fan-shaped cartouche, suggesting an affiliation with the Yomogawa - can be seen on the monkey trainer’s clothes and on the wrapped package in front of the screen. It therefore seems likely that the woman in the design represents the poet Kaneko Hisamori whose poem appears on the print.
For the sanbaso dance, see RP-P-1995-303 and RP-P-1999-290.
Three poems by Kaneko Hisamori, Kasumi no Itsuko and Buntsusha Yasumaru. The poem by Yasumaru alludes to ‘dancing at the beginning of the Monkey Year’.
Issued by the poets
Signature reading: Keisai
Literature
M. Forrer, Surimono in the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, Leiden 2013, no. 502
Citation
M. Forrer, 2013, 'Keisai Eisen, A Female Monkey Trainer, 1824', in Surimono from the Goslings Collection in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.363077
(accessed 20 September 2024 09:25:17).