Carp Ascending Waterfall

This Art Institute of Chicago color woodblock print by Hasegawa Sadanobu I demonstrates the bird-and-flower and animal-study branch of his prolific output, set apart from the actor and landscape prints for which Osaka designers were better known. The image of a carp swimming upstream against a waterfall is one of the most enduring motifs in Japanese visual culture, drawn from the Chinese legend of the carp that ascends the Dragon Gate falls and transforms into a dragon — a popular emblem of perseverance, masculine virtue, and youthful aspiration that became central to Boys' Day celebrations and koinobori (carp streamer) imagery. Sadanobu I's training in the Shijo school of naturalistic painting under Ueda Kocho informs the close observational treatment of the carp's scales, fins, and torsion against the rush of water, while the woodblock medium allows him to print the work in vivid colors with careful registration of the cascading water and the muscular fish at its center. Acquired through the gift of Helen C. Gunsaulus, the print contributes to the AIC's holdings of nineteenth-century Japanese animal studies and represents the breadth of Sadanobu's pictorial range beyond his core kamigata-e production.