hanging scroll;
painting;
mitate-e
- Museum number
- 1913,0501,0.286
- Description
-
Painting, hanging scroll. Parody of Fujiwara Teika's cottage at Mt Ogura: courtesan, accompanied by attendant shielding her with umbrella, approaching up maple-lined path towards thatched retreat where party of men making music. Ink and colour on silk. Signed and sealed.
- Production date
- 1716-1736 (c.)
- Dimensions
-
Height: 34.50 centimetres
-
Width: 53 centimetres
- $Inscriptions
-
-
- Curator's comments
- Clark 1992
Though in poor condition and bearing an otherwise unrecorded seal (?Miyagawa in white letters inside a gourd shape), this small scroll certainly merits consideration within the 'oeuvre' of Choshun or his immediate atelier.
Legends concerning the love affair between the poet Fujiwara no Teika (1162-1241) and Princess Shokushi at Teika's cottage Shigure no Chin ('Arbour of the Autumn Showers') at Mt Ogura in Kyoto had already formed the basis for the No play 'Teika'. In the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries these were adapted for performance in more popular narrative forms - in particular, Tosa 'joruri' versions in which Princess Shokushi visits Teika's cottage disguised as a young dandy.
The present painting is, as it were, a 'domestic' version of this colourful legend, in which the events of history are merely hinted at in an otherwise fashionable modern scene (the device known as 'mitate', see no. 29). A courtesan, accompanied by a 'kamuro' who shields her with an umbrella from the autumn shower, approaches up a maple-lined path towards a thatched retreat where a party of men are making music. Teika is supposed to have played the 'shakuhachi', but one imagines that in the case of Choshun's painting it is the handsome man of fashion playing the 'shamisen' and not the blind flute player who is the courtesan's intended companion - an added twist to the fun.
Choshun painted similar horizontal hanging scrolls of the 'Akutagawa Scene from Isee monogatari' (Kuwabara 1911, no. 25) and 'Lady Murasaki at Ishiyama Temple' ('Tanaka' 1911-13, vol. 2, no. 14).
- Location
- Not on display
- Associated titles
Associated Title: Arbour of the Autumn Showers
- Acquisition date
- 1913
- Acquisition notes
- The collection of Japanese and Chinese paintings belonging to Arthur Morrison was purchased by Sir William Gwynne-Evans, who presented it to the British Museum in 1913.
- Department
- Asia
- Registration number
- 1913,0501,0.286
- Additional IDs
-
Asia painting number: Jap.Ptg.1388 (Japanese Painting Number)
