Detailed Sketches for Drawings of Birds and Flowers and Landscapes (Kachō sansui saiga zushiki)
花鳥山水細画図式
- Date:
- 1865 (Keiō 1)
- Medium:
- Woodblock-printed book; ink on paper
- Source:
- Harvard Art Museums
花鳥山水細画図式
Detailed Sketches for Drawings of Birds and Flowers and Landscapes (Kachō sansui saiga zushiki) is a woodblock-printed drawing manual by Katsushika Isai, published in 1865 (Keiō 1) and held by the Harvard Art Museums (accession 1933.4.79). Where the broader Banbutsu zukai Isai gashiki of the previous year had attempted to catalog every category of Edo-period painting subject, the Kachō sansui saiga zushiki narrows the focus to the two central non-figural genres of Japanese painting: kachō-e (bird-and-flower) and sansui (landscape). The album is composed of dense pages of small sketches — birds of every size and posture, flowering plants and trees through the seasons, rocks and water and mountains, small genre vignettes and figure groups in landscape — designed to be consulted as both instructional models for younger artists and as reference patterns for craftsmen working across the decorative arts. The publication date of Keiō 1 (1865) places it in the very last years of the Tokugawa shogunate, only three years before the Meiji Restoration of 1868, and the wide circulation of Isai's drawing manuals through subsequent reprintings made them a key source of design vocabulary for the Meiji-period craft revival in lacquer, metalwork, and textiles. The Harvard copy is among the better-documented North American institutional sets and has supported study of late-Edo and early-Meiji drawing-manual culture for nearly a century.
夏花図
Edo period (1615–1868)
Folding fan remounted as a hanging scroll; ink and color on silk
万物図会 為斎画式 二編
c. 1864
Woodblock-printed book; ink on paper
春耕図
Edo period (1615–1868)
Folding fan, remounted as a hanging scroll; ink and color on silk
冬耕図／秋耕図
Edo period (1615–1868)
Folding fan; ink and color on paper, with mounting in ivory
Detailed Sketches for Drawings of Birds and Flowers and Landscapes (Kachō sansui saiga zushiki) (花鳥山水細画図式) was created by Katsushika Isai (葛飾為斎) in 1865 (Keiō 1).
Detailed Sketches for Drawings of Birds and Flowers and Landscapes (Kachō sansui saiga zushiki) depicts birds & flowers.
