diptych print
- Museum number
- 1927,0413,0.15
- Title
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Object: Li Bai 李白
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Series: Shika shashin kyo 詩哥写真鏡 (True Mirror of Chinese and Japanese Poems)
- Description
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Colour woodblock print, diptych. The Chinese poet Li Bai (J: Rihaku) admiring a waterfall, with two boys supporting him at edge of chasm.
- Production date
- 1833-1834 (c.)
- Dimensions
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Height: 50.90 centimetres
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Width: 22.90 centimetres
- $Inscriptions
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- Curator's comments
- Clark 2017
The Chinese poet Li Bo (ad 701–762) gazes in rapture at a waterfall, while two young servants steady him at the edge of the chasm. Renowned for his intensity and fondness for alcohol, Li Bo ranks among China’s greatest poets. He composed two celebrated poems while viewing Horsetail fall at Mt Lu (Lushan), in southeastern China. Hokusai probably had in mind the second poem of four lines: ‘Censer Peak in the sunlight puffs clouds of purple haze, / as, seen afar, the waterfall hangs before the river. / The current leaps and tumbles sheer for three-thousand feet. / Or is that the Milky Way pouring from the heights of heaven?’ (trans. Alfred Haft). Rarely had this popular subject been depicted with the boldness of the present design,
which makes striking use of the tall format by splitting the composition into vertical halves. Hokusai may have borrowed the motif of the young servants from an illustration of the same subject in Treasures of Pithy Instruction (Ehon nezashi takara, 1745), by Tachibana Morikuni (1679–1748).
- Location
- Not on display
- Exhibition history
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Exhibited:
2017 25 May - 2 July, 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
- 1927
- Department
- Asia
- Registration number
- 1927,0413,0.15
