diptych print
- Museum number
- 1906,1220,0.571
- Title
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Object: Shonenko 少年行 (The Youth's Song)
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Series: Shiika shashin kyo 詩哥冩真鏡 (True Mirror of Chinese and Japanese Poems)
- Description
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Colour woodblock print, diptych. Poem by Cui Guofu about a young man who lost his riding crop in a brothel district and the next morning had to use a willow-branch as a whip; servant in distance, fisherman on shore. From a series of ten prints based on well-known Chinese and Japanese poems. Inscribed, signed, marked and sealed.
- Production date
- 1833-1834 (c.)
- Dimensions
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Height: 50.30 centimetres (Print)
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Height: 68.50 centimetres (mount)
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Width: 22.70 centimetres (Print)
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Width: 50.60 centimetres (mount)
- $Inscriptions
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- Curator's comments
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Smith 1988
Another print from the series of ten entitled 'A Realistic Mirror of Poets', based on well-known Chinese and Japanese poems. In several of this series Hokusai favoured a combination of the new Prussian blue and the old red vegetable dye 'beni'. The subject here is based on the story of the Han-dynasty Chinese poet Cui Guofu who lost his whip in the capital of Chang'an and used a willow-branch instead. The signature is 'Brushed by the former Hokusai, changing his name to Iitsu'.
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Clark 2017
Classical Chinese poets occasionally composed verses inspired by ancient folk songs (yuefu). Cui Guofu’s (active early ad 700s) version of the ‘Youth’s Song’ has a wealthy young man recalling a misadventure in the brothel district of Zhangtai, where on his way home he had to substitute a willow branch for his lost riding crop. ‘Roadside’ in the poem refers to the brothels and their courtesans: ‘I’d lost my coral riding crop, / and my white horse tossed his head and balked / so I plucked a strand of Zhangtai willow: / the roadside in the spring sun has its charm’ (trans. Alfred Haft). The poem appears in Illustrated Anthology of Tang Poetry, part 1, volume 2 (1788). Hokusai shows the stubborn horse, the youth brandishing a willow branch, his servant, and a local fisherman who has surely seen it all before. The winding waterside path leads the eye through the design.
- Location
- Not on display
- Exhibition history
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Exhibited:
2014 Oct- 2015 Jan, Reunion des musees nationaux Grand Palais, Hokusai
2017 6 Oct - 19 Nov, Osaka, Abeno Harukas Art Museum
2022 16 Apr-12 Jun, Tokyo, Suntory Museum of Art, Hokusai from the British Museum
2023–2024 Oct-Jan, Santa Ana, CA, USA, Bowers Museum, Hokusai: Beyond the Great Wave
- Acquisition date
- 1906
- Department
- Asia
- Registration number
- 1906,1220,0.571
