…; purchased from the dealer Kunsthandel Huys den Esch, Dodewaard, by J.H.W. Goslings (1943-2011), Epse, near Deventer, 1985;¹¹Coll. cat. Goslings 1999, p. 26, cat. no. 42 by whom donated to the museum, 1991

Object number: RP-P-1991-560

Credit line: Gift of J.H.W. Goslings, Epse

The series apparently portrays a selection of twelve great calligraphers. One other design portraying Kukai is known in the Van Reed surimono album in the Stanford Museum (see Keyes²²Keyes, Roger S.,’The Van Reed Surimono Album’, in: The Stanford Museum, vol. III, pp. 2-12. Stanford: Stanford Museum, 1974, p. 9.). Its inclusion in that album is the basis for the tentative dating here of 1806.

A man seated at his writing table, apparently asleep, with piles of books behind him, his court-cap, eboshi, on a stand at his side. To the left, a young woman holds up a framed mirror.

The man is the calligrapher Fujiwara no Yukiyoshi, one of the Three Great Brushes, Sanpitsu, of Japan.

Fujiwara no Yukiyoshi, Sanmi Yukiyoshi, from the series Twelve Excellent Chinese and Japanese Calligraphies, Wakan juninosho.

One poem by Kihitsutei Nobuyoshi, reading:

Sanmi Yukiyoshi, well-versed in three styles of calligraphy - in his First Dream of the New Year, he tries to distinguish them with his brush - the three styles of calligraphy are formal script, cursive script and running script.

Issued by an unidentified poetry club
Signature reading: Eisai Hokutai ga

M. Forrer, Surimono in the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, Leiden 2013, no. 131

M. Forrer, 2013, 'Katsushika Hokutai, A Man Seated at a Writing Table, Japan, c. 1806', in Surimono from the Goslings Collection in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/200415814