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Gain access to this incredible resource through either a monthly or a yearly subscription and search the entire collection from your desktop, compare multiple images side by side and zoom into the minute details of the images. Visit www.davidrumsey.com/amica for more information on the collection, click on the link below the revolving thumbnail to the right, or email us at amica@luna-img.com . Creator Name: Katsukawa, Shunsho Creator Nationality: Asian; Far East Asian; Japanese Creator Role: Artist Creator Dates/Places: Japanese; 1726-1792 Asia,East Asia,Japan Creator Active Place: Asia,East Asia,Japan Creator Name-CRT: Katsukawa Shunsho Title: The Chinese Immortal Seiobo (C: Xi Wang Mu) Title Type: preferred View: Full View Creation Start Date: 1770 Creation End Date: 1779 Creation Date: c. 1770s Creation Place: Asia,East Asia,Japan Object Type: Prints Classification Term: Woodblock Materials and Techniques: Woodblock print. Dimensions: Chu?ban; 25.4 x 17.7 cm Inscriptions: SIGNATURE: Shunsho ga AMICA Contributor: The Art Institute of Chicago Owner Location: Chicago, Illinois, USA ID Number: 1939.574 Credit Line: The Art Institute of Chicago, Frederick W. Gookin Collection Rights: http://www.artic.edu/aic/rights/main.rights.html Context: Seiobo (C: Xi Wang Mu, Queen of the West) was a female Immortal (J: sennin) who, according to Daoist lore, lived in a palace by Jewel (or Turquoise) Pond in the Konron (C: Kunlun) Mountains, where she cultivated a peach tree which bore fruit every three thousand years. To eat of this fruit was to gain immortality, and there are many early accounts of her visiting or being visited by Chinese rulers - from legendary emperors such as Shun and Yu to eminently historical ones such as Han Wu Di (156-87 BC) - and presenting them with peaches from her tree.Shunsho has meticulously created an atmosphere of exotic chinoiserie: Seiobo is shown wearing a fanciful approximation of Tang dynasty (618-906) court costume, standing on a terrace surrounded with a Chinese style railing beside Jewel Pond. One young attendant carries the Peaches of Immortality in a bowl, another a Chinese style fan on a long pole. Even the rock and tree in the background are rendered in the highly inflected ink-painting style of the Kano school, a style based originally on Chinese prototypes.Shunsho designed a series of such prints illustrating legends of Chinese Immortals, all seen through a circular window set in a black ground, with a Chinese poem in white reserve above the window. This distances the scene appropriately in both space and time: it suggests a view into a Chinese garden through the round window of a typical Chinese pavilion, and at the same time a view into the immeasurably distant past through a kind of telescope. The meticulously rendered figure of Seiobo is perfectly framed by this circular surround, her sleeve raised to her chin in that appealingly feminine gesture so often seen in Shunsho's paintings of women.The four-character couplets written above are part of a poem said to have been composed by Seiobo when she visited Emperor Mu (ca. 1000 BC) of the Zhou dynasty:Hakuun ten ni ari (White clouds are in the heavens,)michinori haruka ni toku (The journey is long and far,)sansen kore o hedachi (Mountains and rivers come between.)masa ni mata shisuru koto nashi (Surely you will not die.)Shunsho and his contemporaries Kitao Shigemasa (1739-1820) and Torii Kiyonaga (1752-1815) each produced several series of chu?ban prints featuring round or fan-shaped landscapes set in black surrounds - often sets of 'Eight Views of Lake Biwa' (Omi Hakkei) or scenes of Edo. The two Kiyonaga series of this type have been dated to 1780 and 1781 (without supporting evidence), and the dating of the Shunsho series here to 'about the 1770s' is tentative. AMICA ID: AIC_.1939.574 AMICA Library Year: 1998 Media Metadata Rights: Copyright The Art Institute of Chicago, 1998 AMICA PUBLIC RIGHTS: a) Access to the materials is granted for personal and non-commercial use. b) A full educational license for non-commercial use is available from Cartography Associates at www.davidrumsey.com/amica/institution_subscribe.html c) Licensed users may continue their examination of additional materials provided by Cartography Associates, and d) commercial rights are available from the rights holder. Home
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