Crab and Lotus Plant

Crab and Lotus Plant is a color woodblock print by Taki Katei, dated about 1880-1890, held by the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam (accession RP-P-1961-132) as part of the thirty-nine-print octagonal album donated in 1961. The print measures 22.3 by 28.7 cm and pairs a crab — a standard subject of the Chinese literati ink-painting tradition associated with autumn, with the seasonal poetry of harvest, and with the playful informality of the great Qing crab-painters Bian Shoumin and Xu Wei — with the lotus plant that recurs throughout Katei's repertoire. Crab-painting was a particular test of the literati brush, requiring the painter to render the complex segmented anatomy of the carapace and claws with a few quick strokes of ink, and Katei's treatment in the small octagonal print format gives a deft account of this inherited technical challenge translated into color woodblock. As part of the Rijksmuseum album of small Katei prints, the work demonstrates the breadth of subjects — birds, flowers, insects, crustaceans, still-lifes — that a senior late-nineteenth-century Japanese painter could supply for the deluxe Meiji print trade.