- Museum number
- 1949,1008,0.14.2
- Title
- Object: Genji monogatari 源氏物語 (The Tale of Genji)
- Description
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Painting, handscroll, one of a pair with Jap.Ptg.306. Scenes from chapters 28-54. Ink, colours and gold on silk. Signed and sealed.
The illustrations depict:
28. Court ladies trying to secure blowing curtains
29. Courtier riding with servants through snow
30. Courtier giving fringed pinks to court lady
31. Two courtiers with court lady and girl
32. Two courtiers, one with plum branch and letter
33. Banquet scene, man with wisteria
34. Courtiers playing kickball, cats escaping from room
35. Courtier entertained by female court musicians
36. Courtier seated on veranda, edge of lady's robe visible
37. Courtier playing flute for older court lady, autumn
38. Courtier playing koto beside lotus pond for lady holding rosary
39. Courtier on veranda, distant hills with dawn or sunset
40. Two court ladies watching bugaku dancer, cherry trees
41. Courtier on veranda watching migrating geese
42. Archery contest
43. Courtier speaking with boy holding plum branch
44. Two courtiers running, robe partly covering a koto
45. Courtier listening to two court ladies play instruments, moon
46. Courtier on veranda studying a tree
47. Courtier looking at woman holding silk threads
48. Court lady reading a letter
49. Gathering ivy vines
50. Carriage leaving gate, storm
51. Courtier and court lady in boat, snow scene
52. Courtier on veranda watching fireflies, brushwood fence
53. Court lady writing at desk, farmers harvesting
54. Court lady behind curtain, Buddhist nun, pines
- Production date
- 17thC(late)-18thC(early)
- Dimensions
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Height: 37.30 centimetres
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Width: 2248.40 centimetres
- $Inscriptions
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- Curator's comments
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Genji iconography was popular with the new samurai aristocracy of Edo as well as ancient court families of Kyoto. Kano Hidenobu was a major painter of the Odawara-cho branch of the Kano school.
Chapter 3, 'Shell of the Locust' (Utsusemi) It is a summer's evening. Genji spies on Utsusemi and Nokiba no Ogi as they play 'go' by the light of a standing lantern, a page-boy in attendance. Chapter 34, 'New Herbs - 1' (Wakanojo) Kashiwagi and his three younger brothers play football beneath blossoming cherry-trees. He catches a glimpse of the Third Princess standing just behind the blind when her pet cat escapes out onto the balcony. Their ensuing affair sets in motion a tragic chain of events.
(Label copy, TTC 1996)
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Hizo Nihon bijutsu taikan Vol 2
The production of 'Genji-e', paintings illustrating the celebrated 'Tale of Genji', is believed to date back to shortly after the time, in the early years of the eleventh century, when Murasaki Shikibu first wrote the story. The oldest extant work is 'The Tale of Genji Picture Scroll' from the twelfth century, now divided between the collections of the Tokugawa Art Museum and the Goto Art Museum; numerous pictorial versions of the story have continued to be produced ever since, not only in the picture-scroll format but also on fan faces, 'shikishi' (poem cards), and folding screens. Nor were the artists who produced them confined to the Tosa school that carried on the 'yamato-e' tradition or to the Sumiyoshi school that branched off from the Tosa school, for the same subject was taken up by both the Sotatsu and Kano schools, each bringing its own techniques and styles to bear in recreating the Heian masterpiece. In such ways 'The Tale of Genji' was made available to an increasingly wide audience.
Kano Hidenobu (Ryusetsu; 1646-1712), a pupil of Kano Shoei, was an artist of the Tsukiji Odawara Kano family; he succeeded his father Daigaku Fujinobu, who died in 1669, as an official painter to the shogunate, and in 1709 went with other Edo Kano painters to Kyoto, where he helped paint murals decorating the Imperial Palace.
This scroll depicts one scene from each of 'The Tale of Genji' 's fifty-four chapters, the first of the two scrolls ending with the twenty-seventh chapter, "Kagaribi," while the second scroll includes the remainder. The two scrolls follow the chapters in the order in which they were written; no sections of text are included. Another 'Genji-e', a pair of six-fold screens by Hidenobu's father Fujinobu, survives in a private collection; this work similarly selects one scene from each of the fifty-four chapters and arranges them in correct sequence, setting the scenes off from one another with gold clouds. Other versions illustrating the fifty-four chapters of 'The Tale of Genji' on folding screens include those by Kano Tan'yu and Kano Sanraku; 'The Tale of Genji', in fact, seems to have been a stock item in the repertory of Kano-school painters during the Edo period. The present work and the folding-screen version by Hidenobu's father, Fujinobu, differ considerably, of course, in the amount, of space available for each painting, but the choice of scene is the same for a relatively large number of chapters. The treatment of individual scenes is also quite similar; in both cases, the scenes are organized into horizontal rectangles employing similar motifs and a lot of unpainted space, the shared sensibility thus evident pointing up the relationship between the two works.
- Location
- Not on display
- Exhibition history
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Exhibited:
2010 Feb-Jun, BM Japanese Galleries, 'Japan from prehistory to the present'
2007 Oct 10-, BM Japanese Galleries, 'Japan from prehistory to the present' [Chapters 34, 23, 17, 24, 18, 19]
- Acquisition date
- 1949
- Acquisition notes
- Purchased by James White at the Bowes Sale, Branch & Leete, 20th May 1901 (lot 1965).
- Department
- Asia
- Registration number
- 1949,1008,0.14.2
- Additional IDs
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Asia painting number: Jap.Ptg.Add.307 (Japanese Painting Additional Number)