Lot 232E
19th C. Gekko Woodblock - Sumida Snow Boat
19th C. Gekko Woodblock - Sumida Snow Boat
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Ogata Gekko (Japanese, 1859-1920). "Sumida River Snow Viewing Boat. Color woodblock print, 1898. From the series "Women's Customs and Manners (Fujin Fuzoko Zukushi)." Titled with individual and series titles in cartouche at upper right. Artist's signature and seal at lower right.
A color woodblock print by Ogata Gekko (1859 to 1920), one of the late Meiji era's most internationally celebrated print designers, depicting a lone woman aboard an oared yakatabune drifting on the Sumida River beneath a hush of falling snow. From the series Fujin Fuzoku Zukushi (Women's Customs and Manners), published by Matsuki Heikichi and issued in album form in the late 1890s, the sheet captures one of the great Edo and Meiji urban pleasures, yukimi-bune, the snow-viewing excursion by boat. Size of print: 8.75" W x 13" H (22.2 cm W x 33.0 cm H); of matte: 16" W x 20" H (40.6 cm W x 50.8 cm H).
The composition is engineered around restraint. Gekko grants the upper two-thirds of the sheet to sky and water, washed in the muted blue-grey bokashi gradations that were his signature, and lets the snow-laden roofs of a distant riverbank settlement float at the horizon like an ink-soft thought. Into the lower right he slides the boat, its tile-pattern hull and thatched cabin precisely rendered, snow gathered on the rush matting of the roof. The single passenger, seated within the open cabin in a vermilion uchikake over softer underlayers, holds the sheet's only sustained note of color. Her expression is contained, inward, the very picture of miyabi (refined sensibility) absorbed in the silent transformation of the river.
The Sumida had been the celebrated stage for boating, fireworks, cherry viewing, and snow viewing since the Edo period, and its image was carried forward through Meiji as a touchstone of metropolitan elegance. Gekko's series belongs to the Meiji bijinga lineage that updated Edo-period beauty prints for a modernizing Tokyo, framing women's seasonal activities, professions, and amusements as both ethnographic record and aesthetic ideal. The album was awarded for printing excellence at the Third Domestic Industrial Exposition, and impressions of the series typically reward close looking with embossed (karazuri) snow textures and burnishing (shomen-zuri) on the figure's garments.
The cartouche at upper right carries the series title in formal script and the individual sheet title in flowing sosho, here translated by the British Museum (acc. no. 1906,1220,0.1749) as "Sumida River, oared, snow-viewing boat." Signed Gekko with the artist's red seal at lower right.
About the artist: Ogata Gekko (1859-1920) was born Nakagami Masanosuke in Kyobashi Yazaemon-cho in Edo, the city that would become Tokyo. Self-taught from the outset, he began his career decorating porcelain and rickshaws before graduating to print design and book illustration. Around 1881, at the insistence of a descendant of the lacquer master Ogata Korin, he adopted the Ogata surname, a lineage he wore with evident ambition.
Gekko's rise was swift and international. He exhibited at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893, took the Gold Prize at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in 1904 for his series "One Hundred Views of Mount Fuji," and showed work in Paris and London in 1900 and 1910 respectively. In 1898, Emperor Meiji purchased one of his paintings outright, a distinction few artists of any era would decline. His war triptychs documenting the First Sino-Japanese War (1894-1895) circulated widely and shaped public perception of the conflict at home.
Stylistically, Gekko drew from Kikuchi Yosai early on and acknowledged Hokusai as an inspiration, but developed a mature voice that absorbed elements of nihonga without abandoning the woodblock tradition. He was among the first Japanese artists to build a sustained Western following, and died in Tokyo in 1920. His most prominent student was Kogyo Tsukioka, the adopted son of Yoshitoshi.
Provenance: private Las Vegas, Nevada, USA collection
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Item #
195205
- Condition: Good. Mounted in custom display matte. A few small marks to print and some light creasing to paper, as well as slight discoloring due to age. Old collection number inscribed in pencil on verso by previous owner. Otherwise, in good condition with clear imagery. Old collection label on verso of matte.
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