Spring Farming Scene
春耕図
- Date:
- Edo period (1615–1868)
- Medium:
- Folding fan, remounted as a hanging scroll; ink and color on silk
- Source:
- Metropolitan Museum of Art
春耕図
Spring Farming Scene is a fan painting by Katsushika Isai in ink and color on silk, remounted as a hanging scroll and held by the Metropolitan Museum of Art (accession 2001.561.2). It depicts the labor of early spring in the Japanese agricultural calendar — the preparation of paddies, the planting of seedlings, the seasonal labor of farmers and oxen — and belongs to a subgenre of kōsaku-zu (farming pictures) that descended from Chinese imperial models of "plowing and weaving" imagery and was elaborated through Edo-period painting into a flexible vehicle for both didactic content (the cycle of agricultural labor through the year) and naturalistic landscape painting. Isai's composition follows the long horizontal sweep of the fan format, with figures and trees compressed against a curved horizon, and demonstrates the Hokusai-school capacity for genre painting at small scale. The work is dated by the museum to the Edo period (1615-1868) and entered the Metropolitan's collection in 2001 alongside a companion Summer Flowers fan (2001.561.1), the two together representing Isai's painting practice as a counterweight to the better-known drawing manuals on which his reputation has chiefly rested.
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
花鳥山水細画図式
1865 (Keiō 1)
Woodblock-printed book; ink on paper
冬耕図／秋耕図
Edo period (1615–1868)
Folding fan; ink and color on paper, with mounting in ivory
Spring Farming Scene (春耕図) was created by Katsushika Isai (葛飾為斎) in Edo period (1615–1868).
Spring Farming Scene depicts spring.
