Scene from the Lady at the Bridge Chapter of The Tale of Genji
- Person
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作者Attributed to TAWARAYA Sōtatsu
- Date
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制作年 Edo period(17th century)
- Title
- ゲンジモノガタリハシヒメズ
- Measurements
- 27.5×62.8
- Materials, techniques and shape
- Colour on paper
- Collections
- Century Akao Collection
- Depository
- Keio Museum Commons Campus Mita
- Ref. number
- AW-CEN-000208-0000
- License
- CC BY Images license
- Creditline
-
慶應義塾（センチュリー赤尾コレクション）
- URL
- Classification
- Art
- AI Tagging
- Paint Art Wood Tints and shades Painting
The Genji Monogatari (Tale of Genji) is a lengthy novel of court romances in fifty-four chapters, written by the court lady Murasaki Shikibu (Lady Murasaki, dates of birth and death unknown) in the early eleventh century. The first attempt to illustrate in painting was made at the beginning of the twelfth century in the harem of Tamako (1101-1145), a consort of Emperor Toba (1107-1123). The Genji Monogatari Emaki (Illustrated Handscrolls of the Tale of Genji) now partly surviving in the collections if the Tokugawa Art Museum and the Goto Art Museum was produced about thirty to forty years after that. Shown here is a scene from the Tale of Genji illustrated by Tawaraya Sotatsu (dates of birth and death unknown), an artist who was active in Kyoto during the late Momoyama and early Edo periods. There were at the time various stylized types of Genji illustrations, termed Genji-e (Genji pictures), treating of scenes from respective chapters of the novel. Illustrated here is a scene from the Hashihime Chapter in which Kaoru, son of Hikaru Genji, visits the princesses at their abode in Uji (in the suburbs of Kyoto). It entertains us with rich bright colors and fantastic composition.
This painting of a scene from the ‘Lady at the Bridge’ chapter of The Tale of Genji used to be part of a pair of folding screens owned by the industrialist DAN Takuma (1858–1932), head of the Mitsui Zaibatsu financial combine. It depicts Kaoru peeping at Naka no kimi playing the biwa lute illuminated by the moon through the fence of her home in Uji. The painting is a fragment from the only Genji screens that were produced in a workshop led by the artist TAWARAYA Sōtatsu, a valuable pair of screens that included all 54 chapters of the tale. Currently, the depictions of all 54 chapters are only reproduced in black-and-white illustrations in a book entitled Collected Paintings of Sōtatsu (Shinbi Shoin, 1913), and the only way to know what the screens originally looked like Other parts of the screens are now in the possession of the Idemitsu Museum of Art, the Sunritz Hattri Museum of Arts, and other museums.
Sōtatsu adopted the styles and compositions from classical depictions on handscrolls and other formats and carefully rearranged them. In this work, the protagonists are rendered skillfully, with their eyes and noses slightly separated like dolls, and the soft curvy lines and shapes of the river bank and clouds convey the appealing style of the Sōtatsu studio.
Description from the exhibition Catalogue "Letter-scape: Century Akao Collection, A World of Letters and Figures", Keio Museum Commons, April 2021
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Identifiers
- Title (EN)
- Scene from the Lady at the Bridge Chapter of The Tale of Genji
Physical description
- Weights and quantities
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Quantity 1幅
- Attachments
- 複製画／コピー冊子
Provenance
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