Seated Woman with Pipe

…; purchased from the dealer Hotei Japanese Prints, Leiden, by J.H.W. Goslings (1943-2011), Epse, near Deventer, 1984;¹¹Coll. cat. Goslings 1999, p. 15, cat. no. 13 by whom donated to the museum, 1991

ObjectNumber: RP-P-1991-551

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

This surimono is mostly seen as one of four Meiji-period (1868-1912) facsimiles (cf. RP-P-1995-288). This is one of a few originals recorded.²²Keyes, Roger S., The Art of Surimono. Privately Published Japanese Woodblock Prints and Books in the Chester Beatty Library, Dublin, 2 vols. London: Sotheby’s Publications, 1985, Appendix, p. 16. Other original impressions are recorded in the Achenbach Foundation, San Francisco; the Art Institute of Chicago; the Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge; and the Rietberg Museum, Zurich.

A seated woman, her left hand resting on a long pipe. On her kimono a stag among flowers.

The God Jurojin, Juro, from the series A Parody on the Seven Gods of Good Fortune, Mitate shichifukujin.

The stag and the staff (represented here by the pipe the woman is holding) to which a scroll is tied are the usual attributes of the popular God of Fortune, Jurojin.

Two poems by Ryusanro Okikaze and Yoshinoya Futaba [also Rokudaen or Jushoken Futaba, a judge of the Gogawa, later also the owner of a brothel in the New Yoshiwara, d. 1858].³³Kano, Kaian (ed.), Kyoka jinmei jisho (Dictionary of Names of Kyoka Poets). Kyoto: Rinsen shoten, 1977 (1928), p. 191.

The first poem speaks of 'the First Writing of the New Year when the snow melts on the mountains in the south'.

Issued by the Shipporen
Signature reading: Gakutei

M. Forrer, Surimono in the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, Leiden 2013, no. 461

M. Forrer, 2013, 'Yashima Gakutei, Seated Woman with Pipe, Japan, c. 1828', in Surimono from the Goslings Collection in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.377894