Clouds of Prince Genji

Dated to the summer of 1885, this surimono references "The Clouds of Prince Genji" - a phrase drawn from the world of The Tale of Genji, the eleventh-century courtly novel that remained an inexhaustible source of imagery for Edo and Meiji artists. Zeshin's allusive treatment of the theme is consistent with kyoka practice, in which classical motifs are filtered through humor and contemporary sensibility. The Art Institute of Chicago dates the print to summer 1885, and it forms part of the museum's substantial holding of Zeshin's late-Meiji surimono. By the mid-1880s, Zeshin had already won an international medal at the 1873 Vienna exposition, exhibited at the Philadelphia Centennial in 1876, and would shortly receive a gold medal at the 1889 Paris Exposition; he was simultaneously a senior figure in the emerging Meiji art establishment and a loyal collaborator with the kyoka poets who had supported his career for half a century. Sheets like this one document that double life.