Pair of Mandarin Ducks beneath Blossoming Plum

Pair of Mandarin Ducks beneath Blossoming Plum, produced around 1813, is a kacho-ga or bird-and-flower design by Katsushika Hokusai, in which a pair of mandarin ducks rests beneath the gnarled branches of a blossoming plum tree. The composition draws on a long East Asian tradition in which the mandarin duck symbolises conjugal fidelity and the plum represents resilience and the promise of spring. Hokusai treats the subject with the precise observational eye that would inform his later great kacho-ga series of the 1830s, while the muted palette suggests a late winter or early spring scene. As a ukiyo-e print, the design balances finely carved detail in the bird plumage and plum blossoms with broader washes of colour for ground and sky. The Harvard Art Museums preserve an impression of this print, and the museum's collection of Edo ukiyo-e kacho-ga supports comparative study with later flower-and-bird series by Hokusai, Hiroshige and the Meiji shin-hanga revivalists. Although Hokusai is best known today for his landscapes, the bird-and-flower tradition was an important part of his output over many decades, and this design represents the genre at an early but already accomplished stage of his career. The print also illustrates the rich symbolic vocabulary that an Edo ukiyo-e audience would have read in even an apparently quiet decorative image.