drawing
- Museum number
- 2015,3012.1
- Description
-
Drawing, ink on paper, three joined sheets. Block-ready preparatory drawing (hanshita-e) for a colour woodblock triptych print. The generals of the Warring States period Obata Toramori and Katsuchiyomaru (top left), and Yamamoto Kansuke (bottom right) watch as a giant boar tosses their retainers into the air.
- Production date
- 1849 (circa)
- Dimensions
-
Height: 36.60 centimetres
-
Width: 75.50 centimetres
- Curator's comments
- Three generals from the civil wars of the 16th century—Obata Toramori and Katsuchiyo Maru (top left), and Yamamoto Kansuke (bottom right)—observe as a giant wild boar charges through the snow, tossing their retainers into the air as he passes. Trials of strength between men and giant beasts inspired some of Kuniyoshi’s most memorable designs. The theme is particularly effective, as here, when spread across all three sheets of a triptych—a compositional device that Kuniyoshi developed and excelled in. This vividly imagined and finely executed drawing is the first example of a block-ready drawing (hanshita-e) by Kuniyoshi to enter the Museum’s collection. Unlike preparatory-stage sketches, which have survived elsewhere in their hundreds, block-ready drawings by Kuniyoshi are extremely rare. Leading Kuniyoshi scholar Iwakiri Yuriko has commented that this is from the artist’s own hand, and suggests a date circa 1849. Although in the end the design was never published, the main elements were reused, in reverse, two decades later by his pupil Yoshitoshi, in a rare early triptych of the same subject published in 1868. Iwakiri surmises that Kuniyoshi kept a group of such drawings in his studio, and that after his death his successors added a red ‘Yoshikiri’ seal under the signature on each sheet, as found here. The drawing complements the Arthur Miller Collection of some 1,800 colour woodblock prints by Kuniyoshi. It is accompanied by a photocopied letter of 9 December 1987 from B.W. Robinson (1912-2005) giving his opinion on this work to then owner, M. Bernard Rousseau. Robinson details the subject and indicates a date of around 1852. (T. Clark, 5/2015)
- Location
- Not on display
- Exhibition history
-
Exhibited:
2019 Apr - Oct, BM, Mitsubishi Corporation Japanese Galleries
- Acquisition date
- 2015
- Department
- Asia
- Registration number
- 2015,3012.1
- Additional IDs
-
Asia painting number: Jap.Ptg.Add.1381
