Butterfly on Flower

Butterfly on Flower is a color woodblock print by Taki Katei, dated about 1880-1890, held by the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam (accession RP-P-1961-146) as part of the thirty-nine-print octagonal album donated in 1961. The print measures 22.3 by 28.7 cm and pairs a butterfly with a flowering plant — one of the most ubiquitous combinations in East Asian bird-and-flower (or, more precisely, insect-and-flower) painting, associated with summer warmth, with the brief beauty of seasonal life, and (in the Chinese literati tradition that Katei inherited) with the famous Zhuangzi dream of being a butterfly that became one of the foundational images of Daoist philosophy. Butterflies were a standard subject in the late Edo and Meiji-period nanga repertoire, and Katei's treatment in the small octagonal print combines the close observational drawing of wing and antennae expected of a senior bird-and-flower painter with the asymmetric, decorative composition typical of Meiji-period album prints. As part of the Rijksmuseum's coherent group of nine Katei prints, the work demonstrates the artist's range across the bird-and-flower subjects that defined his Imperial Household commissions in larger formats.