Descending Geese of the Koto Bridges (Kotoji no rakugan), from the series "Eight Views of the Parlor (Zashiki hakkei)"
- Date:
- c. 1766
- Medium:
- Color woodblock print; chuban
- Source:
- Art Institute of Chicago
Suzuki Harunobu's "Descending Geese of the Koto Bridges (Kotoji no rakugan)," from the series "Eight Views of the Parlor (Zashiki hakkei)," dated about 1761 in the Art Institute of Chicago's records, is one of the most celebrated entries in his great mitate-e cycle. The canonical view of "Descending Geese on a Sandbar," inherited from Chinese landscape and adapted to Lake Biwa, is here transferred to the parlor: the descending geese become the small bridges (kotoji) of a koto whose strings slope toward the player, and the autumnal melancholy of the original is preserved through the figure's poised quiet. The two slender figures around the instrument display the chuban bijin-ga body type that Harunobu made standard, with small features and patterned robes carefully registered against the interior. As a foundational practitioner of nishiki-e, the polychrome "brocade print" technique that revolutionized Edo printmaking in the mid-1760s, Suzuki Harunobu used multiple precisely registered woodblocks to lay down the soft pinks, jades, and grays that lend the scene its mood of cultivated retreat. The chuban format keeps the parlor intimate. The Art Institute of Chicago preserves the impression among its substantial Harunobu holdings, where the print exemplifies the artist's gift for fusing classical landscape allusion with the domestic refinement of Edo ukiyo-e.
c. 1767/68
Color woodblock print; hashira-e
c. 1767/68
Color woodblock print; chuban
c. 1767/68
Color woodblock print; chuban
c. 1764/65
Color woodblock print; hosoban, mizu-e
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1947
Color woodblock print; oban
1926
Color woodblock print; oban
1930
Color woodblock print; oban
Woodblock print
Descending Geese of the Koto Bridges (Kotoji no rakugan), from the series "Eight Views of the Parlor (Zashiki hakkei)" was created by Suzuki Harunobu (鈴木春信) in c. 1766.
Descending Geese of the Koto Bridges (Kotoji no rakugan), from the series "Eight Views of the Parlor (Zashiki hakkei)" depicts bridges.