A Horse Washing in a River

A Horse Washing in a River is a color woodblock print by Kawabata Gyokushō, dated about 1880-1890, held by the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam (accession RP-P-1961-128) as part of the thirty-nine-print octagonal album donated in 1961. The print measures 22.3 by 28.7 cm and depicts the small domestic motif of a horse being washed in a river — an image with deep roots in Japanese genre painting and in the broader East Asian tradition of bathing horses (yokuba) as a subject for handscroll and album painting. Maruyama Ōkyo had treated bathing horses in the eighteenth century, and the subject continued to circulate in the Shijō and Maruyama lineages into the Meiji period. Gyokushō's drawing of the horse reflects the careful anatomical observation expected of Maruyama-school painters, while the river setting allows him to deploy his command of ink and color in the lightly textured rendering of moving water and the river bank. As part of the Rijksmuseum octagonal album, the print sits alongside other small genre and seasonal motifs that together demonstrate the range of subjects a senior Meiji nihonga painter could provide for the deluxe print trade.