Chinese Poet

Chinese Poet by Suzuki Harunobu, recorded with a date of 1756 by the Art Institute of Chicago, reflects mid-eighteenth-century Edo interest in continental literary culture filtered through ukiyo-e idiom. Although his career is closely identified with the 1765 emergence of nishiki-e, Harunobu also produced earlier benizuri-e prints and continued throughout his life to draw on Chinese subject matter as a way of expanding bijin-ga's symbolic range. In this composition a figure dressed in vaguely Chinese robes - long sleeves, a soft cap, perhaps a scroll or brush at hand - stands in a setting that evokes the literati ideal of a poet at leisure in nature. The treatment is filtered through the soft proportions and willowy line that Suzuki Harunobu used for both male and female figures in Edo bijin-ga, so that the Chinese poet feels less like an ethnographic record than like a fashionable allusion. Such mitate compositions allowed Edo viewers to engage with classical Chinese poetry and the kanshi (Chinese-style verse) culture that Confucian scholars promoted, while still enjoying the visual surface of an ordinary ukiyo-e print. The sheet's color separation reflects the technical care typical of Harunobu's workshop output, and the muted palette quietly references the ink-painting traditions associated with Chinese poet portraits. Source: Art Institute of Chicago, no. 44194.