- Museum number
- 1950,1111,0.16
- Description
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Painting, hanging scroll. Cormorant on stump: cormorant perching on breakwater; candock plant below pushing up its yellow flowers and heart-shaped leaves from roots in riverbed. Ink and colour on paper. Signed and sealed.
- Production date
- 1847
- Dimensions
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Height: 126.10 centimetres
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Width: 47.80 centimetres
- $Inscriptions
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- Curator's comments
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Clark 1992
In what is certainly the strangest work by Hokusai in the collection an ungainly cormorant perches on a breakwater, while a candock plant ('kohone') below pushes up its yellow flowers and heart-shaped leaves from roots in the riverbed. At first the relative proportions of the bird and its surroundings seem eccentric and the composition curiously empty and lacking in obvious focus; yet the more closely one observes the details and the technique, the more its qualities are revealed. Rich washes of pink, green and grey underlie the scumbled texture of dots and lines on the posts and the riverbank. The leaves of the candock plant have deeper tonalities of green, blue and black, their outlines formed by inked, dry strokes, each of which has its own character and sensitivity. The flowers are open at different stages, and one lies half-submerged in the water resembling the maple leaves in 'Ducks in Flowing Water' (no. 103). Once again Hokusai gives detailed instructions for painting candock plants in 'Ehon saishiki tsu' (vol. 1, p. 10 recto).
Finally one notices the flowering (?)reed which reaches up towards the bird; the dry, halting lines of the leaves are stretched as taut as elastic, and each stamen of the flower is like a tiny exploding star. The overall impression is of an irrepressible life force - a formidable tribute to the undiminished powers of the 'old man of eighty-eight'.
An inferior version of this composition is illustrated in Tokyo, Goto Bijutsukan 1969, no. 31.
Literature:
Tokyo-to Bijutsukan (eds), 'Daiei Hakubutsukan hizo Edo bijutsu ten'. Exh. cat., 9 Aug.-24 Sept. 1990, no. 211.
Forrer, Matthi, and Goncourt, Edmond de, 'Hokusai'. New York, Rizzoli, 1988, no. 440.
Clark, Timothy. "Paintings by Hokusai in the British Museum", 'Orientations'. Vol. 21, no. 8 (Aug. 1990), 37-44, fig. 11.
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Asahi 1996
大英博物館所蔵の北斎作品の中で、最も奇妙な作品である。鵜が杭に止まり、その下では河骨が黄色い花やハート形の葉を河床の根から伸ばしている。一見鵜とその周囲との釣合いがとれず、構図も妙に空虚で焦点がないようにも見える。しかし、細部や技法を目近に観察すればするほど、本作品の本質が見えてくる。岸や杭を描く点や線の複雑な風合いの下には、深みのある桃色や緑や灰色がある。河骨の葉には緑や青や黒のより深い色調が与えられ、乾いた墨で引かれた輪郭線には固有の性格と感覚が備わっている。花の開き加減は皆異なり、その一つは、「流水に鴨図」の紅葉と同じく半ば水に埋もれている。ここでも北斎は、絵手本「絵本彩色通」の中で描いた河骨（第1巻10丁表）に詳しい構造を与えている。
最後に、鳥に向かって伸びる芦（？）に気付く。その葉を描く線は乾いてとぎれがちであるのに、ゴムのように弾力的に伸び、花の雄蘂はあたかも輝く小さな星のようだ。最終的に、見る者は押さえがたい生命力に圧倒され、「88歳の老人」の衰えざる力に畏敬と称賛を禁じ得ない。
同じ構図で出来の劣る作品が紹介されている（五島美術館『肉筆葛飾北斎展』図録 1969年 31図）。
（竹内美砂子（名古屋市博物館））
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Clark 2017
This is a deliberately eccentric painting: subject – an ungainly cormorant inspecting us warily out of one eye; viewpoint – looking up from mudflats that surround encrusted breakwater posts; technique – a different treatment used for each part of the composition. Perhaps the willed insistence here from eighty-eight-year-old Hokusai that we should focus on an un-picturesque scene is in fact the point? When we look longer, secondary qualities are revealed: yellow candock (kōhone) plants emerging from the water at different stages of flowering; iridescent deep blue flashes within the plumage of the bird; rich colouring beneath the scumbled textures on the post; the stalks and leaves of the flowering water plant stretched taught. Hokusai gives instructions for painting candock plants in volume 1 of Picture Book: Essence of Colouring (cat. 211), probably written in the same year that this hanging scroll was done.(Timothy Clark)
- Location
- Not on display
- Exhibition history
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Exhibited:
2010 Oct 19- 2011 Feb 14, BM Japanese Galleries, 'Japan from Prehistory to the Present'
2017 8 July - 13 Aug, London, BM, G35, Hokusai: Beyond the Great Wave
2017 6 Oct - 19 Nov, Osaka, Abeno Harukas Art Museum
- Acquisition date
- 1950
- Department
- Asia
- Registration number
- 1950,1111,0.16
- Additional IDs
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Asia painting number: Jap.Ptg.Add.336 (Japanese Painting Additional Number)
