painting;
hanging scroll
- Museum number
- OA+,0.374
- Description
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Painting, hanging scroll. Group of geishas and young attendant playing musical instruments (shamisen and kokyu), seated woman offering cup of sake, courtesan standing and holding fan and long metal pipe. Ink, colour and gold on silk. Signed and sealed.
- Production date
- 1801-1818
- Dimensions
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Height: 80.40 centimetres
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Width: 94.60 centimetres
- $Inscriptions
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- Curator's comments
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Clark 1992
In this large composition a group of five geishas and a young attendant are shown playing their musical instruments and preparing for a party. Two women strum 'shamisen', while a third balances a 'kokyu', played with a bow, on her knee. Another figure seated on the other side of a red lacquer table loaded with dishes of raw fish offers a cup of sake, and the fifth woman stands holding a round fan and a long metal pipe. The fan and the thin gauze garments indicate that the weather is still warm, but this must be the seventh or eighth month, for the vase in the 'tokonoma' is filled with early chrysanthemums and the fan decorated with flowering bushclover, another plant of autumn. The party room is luxuriously appointed, its 'tokonoma' filled with shelves painted in black lacquer and gold on which are placed coloured porcelains and tea-jars. The cupboard doors are all painted with ink landscapes (some on gold backgrounds) in Kano style - showing off the fact that this style, too, was part of Kunihisa's repertoire - and a scroll of a courtier admiring a waterfall hangs behind the vase of chrysanthemums. The room opens on to a pine tree in the garden, behind which
seagoing fishing-boats are moored, suggesting that this is one of the unlicensed pleasure quarters facing on to Edo Bay in Shinagawa, Tsukuda Island or Susaki in Fukagawa.
The figures have the same idiosyncratic style seen in other paintings by Kunihisa, showing a certain degree of influence from his (or her) teacher Toyokuni mixed with the predominant late style of Utamaro. Outlines are strong and angular, and the faces all have open, pouting mouths with iridescent green lipstick painted on the lower lips. Kunihisa demonstrates considerable technical skill in the way he (or she) handles the transparency of the summer gauze kimono and pays a great deal of attention to the complex brocade patterns, including much use of gold lines, on the 'obi'. He (or she) should be considered one of the most accomplished of the later Utagawa school painters.
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Asahi 1996
本作品の大きな画面には5人の芸者と年若い小間使いが描かれ、楽器を奏で宴に備えている。三味線をかき鳴らすものが二人、3人目は胡弓をひざで支え、弓で鳴らしながら調子を合わせている。4人目は刺身の皿を乗せた朱塗りの膳の反対側に座って酒杯をすすめている。5人目は団扇と長煙管をもって立っている。団扇と薄物の着物からまだ暑い季節と知れるが、旧暦の7月か8月にはなっているであろう。床の間の花器に生けられているのは早咲きの菊であり、団扇に描かれた萩も秋の植物である。この座敷は贅沢な調度で整えられている。床の間には黒漆に金を散らした棚を置き、色絵付や茶入を飾っている。小襖全てに狩野派風の水墨山水画が描かれ、金地になっているものもある。狩野派風の水墨画も国久の得意とするところであり、菊の生け花の後ろに貴人が滝を見る図柄の掛軸も描かれる。座敷の外には庭の松が見え、その向こうには沖合いに出る舟の舟溜りがあり、この場所が江戸湾に面した品川か佃島か深川の州崎かといった岡場所（非公認の遊女）であることを示している。
人物の表現は国久の他の作品と同じ特徴を示し、師豊国の画風と当時の時代様式である歌麿の後期の画風にかなり影響を受けている。輪郭線は強くて角ばっていて、口を尖らせて半あきで、下唇に笹色紅をさしている。国久は夏着の薄物が透けるさまを描く技術をよく示し、金を多用した帯の模様や着物の複雑な模様を丹念に描いている。国久は後期歌川派屈指の肉筆画の名手といえよう。
（伊藤紫織（千葉市美術館））
- Location
- Not on display
- Exhibition history
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Exhibited:
2007 Oct 10-2008 Feb 17, BM Japanese Galleries, 'Japan from prehistory to the present'
2020 Feb - 1 Nov, London, Victoria and Albert Museum, Kimono Fashion
- Acquisition date
- 1983
- Department
- Asia
- Registration number
- OA+,0.374
- Additional IDs
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Asia painting number: Jap.Ptg.3584 (Japanese Painting Number)
