Spring Rain Collection (Harusame shū), vol. 3: Marsh-tits and Crab Apple Flowers

Part of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's complete volume three of the Harusame shū (Spring Rain Collection), this surimono of circa 1820 depicts marsh-tits and crab apple flowers in the kachō-e (bird-and-flower) mode. The Harusame shū was a luxury kyōka album assembling privately published surimono mounted into bound volumes, produced for the collectors and poets of the kyōka network in the late Bunka and early Bunsei years, and Hokuba was one of its principal contributing designers across all volumes. The kachō plates show his command of the genre at its most refined: small birds rendered with naturalistic attention to plumage, posture, and the alert tilt of the head, paired with seasonal flowers drawn in light, sure line. The plain ground common to surimono kachō-e throws the bird-and-branch composition into clean relief and leaves space for the kyōka verses that accompany each plate. The Met's impression preserves the album mounting, the fine paper, and the close color register that distinguish a Bunka-era surimono of the first rank, exactly as the album's commissioning subscribers would have received it.