hanging scroll;
painting;
triptych
- Museum number
- 1881,1210,0.1735
- Description
-
Painting, hanging scroll, left in set of three (with JP 757 & 758). Distant view of Mt Fuji over rocky cliff-face of Enoshima island with Chopping Board Rock. Ink and colour on silk. Signed and sealed.
- Production date
- 1790-1817
- Dimensions
-
Height: 99.80 centimetres (c.)
-
Height: 187 centimetres (mount)
-
Width: 37.01 centimetres (c.)
-
Width: 57 centimetres (mount)
- $Inscriptions
-
-
- Curator's comments
-
Clark 2001
Minamoto no Yoritomo (1147-99), first Shogun of the Kamakura military government, is said to have performed an act of Buddhist piety by staging a 'ceremony to release living beings' ('hojo-e'), releasing one thousand cranes from Yuigahama beach at Kamakura. This legend was certainly current in the Edo Period (1600-1868) and illustrated in many Ukiyo-e prints, but it is not confirmed by the military chronicle 'Azuma kagami' (compiled in the late Kamakura Period, 1185-1333) that is the main biographical source concerning Yoritomo's life (Tsurugaoka Hachimangu, 'Minamoto Yoritomo-ko ten', 1999, no. 46). The centre scroll of the present triptych depicts Yoritomo on horseback accompanied by two warrior retainers, one of whom shields him with a parasol. The landscape on the right features what is probably the great stone shrine gateway ('torii') located next to Yuigahama beach, at the beginning of the approach to the Tsurugaoka Hachiman Shrine, and a pair of the released cranes. Cranes were revered for living a long life and pine trees stay perpetually green, so this scroll is filled with particularly auspicious imagery. The left scroll shows a distant view of Mt Fuji past the rocky cliff-face of Enoshima island with 'Chopping Board Rock' (Manaita-iwa). Imagery relating to Yoritomo would have been popular with the samurai aristocracy in the Edo period as they regarded him as the first great samurai ruler; indeed, the Tokugawa dynasty claimed descent from the same Seiwa Genji line (established by Emperor Seiwa, who ruled 858-76) to which Yoritomo belonged.
Ko Sukei was the pupil, later the adopted son of Ko Sukoku (1730-1804), the most important painter during the later 18th century in the lineage established by the renegade Kano school painter Hanabusa Itcho (1652-1724), sometimes referred to as the Hanabusa school. The school continued the humorous but decorous genre subjects favoured by Itcho, with none of the urban vulgarity of contemporary Ukiyo-e, as well as historical and legendary subjects. Large 'ema' (votive paintings) by both Sukoku and Sukei survive at the Asakusa Kannon Temple (Senso-ji), Tokyo.
-
'1719 to 1746. Kano School.'
'1735. Seal Fujiwara' (unattributed annotations in the specially interleaved Japanese Study Room copy of Anderson 1886)
- Location
- Not on display
- Exhibition history
-
Exhibited:
2001, 11 May-29 Jul, BM Japanese Galleries, '100 Views of Mount Fuji'
- Acquisition date
- 1881
- Acquisition notes
- The collection of over 2,000 Japanese and Chinese paintings assembled by Prof. William Anderson during his residency in Japan, 1873-1880, was acquired by the Museum in 1881. The items were not listed in the register, but rather were published separately as the 'Descriptive and Historical Catalogue of a Collection of Japanese and Chinese Paintings in the British Museum' (Longmans & Co, 1886).
- Department
- Asia
- Registration number
- 1881,1210,0.1735
- Additional IDs
-
Asia painting number: Jap.Ptg.759 (Japanese Painting Number)
