print
- Museum number
- 1910,0614,0.23
- Title
- Object: Ikaru oshiroi 鵤 白粉 (Grosbeak and mirabilis jalapa)
- Description
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Woodblock print. Grosbeak and mirabilis jalapa with a poem.
- Production date
- 1834 (circa)
- Dimensions
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Height: 25.40 centimetres
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Width: 18.50 centimetres
- $Inscriptions
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- Curator's comments
- Clark 2017
Both this print and cat. 97 have gradated crimson shading from the top, with red flowers featured at the bottom. Examples are known with and without a very light Prussian blue ground in the lower half of the design. The grosbeak is quite a large bird, with a distinctive yellow beak. It appears also in volume 3 of Hokusai’s Sketches (Hokusai manga). Mirabilis jalapa (also called four o’clock flower, or marvel of Peru) is native to the Americas. It is thought to have reached Japan via Holland, entering the country through the port of Nagasaki. As Hokusai shows here, the flowers come in a variety of colours with different patterning. This plant appears again among Hokusai’s Drawings for a three-volume picture book (about 1823–1835, cats 30, 168). At top right is a short verse (hokku) by a female poet named Yōdai: ‘Four o’clock flowers / thrive on the far side of fences, / behind the peonies’ (Oshiroi no / hana ya botan no / ushirogaki) (the source of the poem is unknown).
- Location
- Not on display
- Exhibition history
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Exhibited:
2017 8 July - 13 Aug, London, BM, G35, Hokusai: Beyond the Great Wave
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
- 1910
- Department
- Asia
- Registration number
- 1910,0614,0.23