Japanese Woodblock Prints
Japanese Woodblock Prints
Lot Closed
July 18, 01:25 PM GMT
Estimate
6,000 - 8,000 GBP
Lot Details
Description
Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849)
Poem by Chunagon Yakamochi
Edo period, 19th century
woodblock print, from the series One Hundred Poems by One Hundred Poets as Told by the Nurse (Hyakunin isshu
uba ga etoki), signed Saki no Hokusai Manji (Manji, the former Hokusai), censor’s seal kiwame (approved), published by Nihimuraya Yohachi (Eijudo), circa 1835-36
Horizontal oban: 25.3 x 36.4 cm., 10 x 14⅜ in.
For his last single sheet series of woodblock prints, One Hundred Poems Explained by the Nurse (Hyakunin isshu uba ga etoki), Katshushika Hokusai looked to an anthology of well-known poems, entitled Hyakunin Isshu (A Hundred Poems by a Hundred Poets), as his source. These poems, based on love and melancholy, were assembled by the thirteenth-century poet Fujiawara no Teika (1162-1241). Hokusai chose to visually recount the poems from the perspective of a fictional elderly nurse. Together with sixty-four preparatory drawings, twenty-seven published prints are known, each exhibiting bold colour and including a cartouche enclosing the relevant verse. The series was commissioned by the publisher Nishimura Yohachi and his firm Eijudo successfully issued five prints before closing down; the additional twenty-two prints were then published by Iseya Sanjiro’s firm Iseri, with the original Eijudo seal continuing to be employed.
The poem in this print is by Chunagon Yakamochi (Otomo no Yakamochi, 718-785), an important political figure who compiled the first Imperial anthology of poems. The poem has been translated by Peter MacMillan in One Hundred Poets, One Poem Each: A Treasury of Classical Japanese Verse, (London, 2016), p. 9:
How the night deepens.
A ribbon of the whitest frost
is stretched across
the bridge of magpie wings
the lovers will cross
Kasasagi no
wataseru hashi ni
oku shimo no
shiroki o mireba
yo zo fukenikeru
For a similar impression of the same print in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (The MET), accession number JP2934, go to:
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