Bamboo Poetry Sheet

Issued in the fall of 1860, this color woodblock [surimono](/glossary/surimono) pairs a brushed image of bamboo with kyoka poetry, in the privately commissioned format Zeshin worked in for decades. The single bamboo motif is characteristic of his mid-career surimono manner: a calligraphic stalk and leaves rendered with the same economy he brought to his lacquer paintings, set against expanses of unprinted paper that emphasize the quality of the sheet itself. Surimono were not commercial prints; they were luxury commissions for kyoka poetry clubs, printed in small editions on thick paper with metallic pigments, blind embossing, and gradations beyond what the commercial woodblock industry would have supported. Zeshin, who had trained both as a Maruyama-Shijo painter and as a lacquer master under Koma Kansai II, was an ideal collaborator for these projects because he could translate a brush sketch into block-cut line without losing its spontaneity. The sheet is held by the Art Institute of Chicago, which preserves one of the most important holdings of Zeshin surimono outside Japan; the institution's online catalog dates it to fall 1860, anchoring it firmly to the late Edo phase of Zeshin's career.