Rural Scene in Early Summer: Peasants Transplanting Rice and a Man Washing a Horse
- Date:
- late 1790s
- Medium:
- Color woodblock print; long surimono
- Source:
- Art Institute of Chicago
Katsukawa Shunei's Rural Scene in Early Summer: Peasants Transplanting Rice and a Man Washing a Horse, dated to around 1795, departs from the actor portraits and kabuki narratives that occupy most of his surviving work. Instead the print presents the seasonal labour of the Japanese countryside: figures bent in rice paddies setting young plants in flooded fields while another figure attends to a horse near a watercourse. Such pastoral subjects belonged to a long tradition of seasonal imagery in Edo [ukiyo-e](/glossary/ukiyo-e), where the rhythms of the agricultural year supplied both calendrical structure and a counterpart to the urban pleasures more often depicted in the genre. Although Shunei's reputation rests on his [yakusha-e](/glossary/yakusha-e) contributions to the Katsukawa school, this sheet shows him working within a quieter pictorial register, with attention to landscape spacing and figure grouping rather than the close-up theatrical bravura of his actor prints. The work hints at the breadth of subjects the late eighteenth-century Katsukawa workshop was willing to undertake, and suggests how its artists adapted the school's draughtsmanship to genre subjects beyond the theater district. The print is preserved in the Art Institute of Chicago, where it is documented at https://www.artic.edu/artworks/81444 and helps round out the picture of Shunei's career within the wider field of Edo print production.
c. 1793
Color woodblock print; hosoban; from a multisheet composition (?)
c. 1794
Color woodblock print; hosoban
About 1795
Color woodblock print; ôban
c. 1793
Color woodblock print; hosoban
広隆寺牛祭
Woodblock print
二月 (伏見稲荷大社祭)
second half 20th century
Woodblock print, ink and color on paper
七月 (祇園祭山鉾巡行)
second half 20th century
Woodblock print, ink and color on paper
八月 (三条大橋より大文字)
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Woodblock print, ink and color on paper
Rural Scene in Early Summer: Peasants Transplanting Rice and a Man Washing a Horse was created by Katsukawa Shun'ei (勝川春英) in late 1790s.
Rural Scene in Early Summer: Peasants Transplanting Rice and a Man Washing a Horse depicts summer.