Sparrow dancers, from "A Set of Six for the Katsushika Circle (Katsushika rokuban tsuzuki)"
- Date:
- c. 1827/28
- Medium:
- Color woodblock print; bottom three sheets of shikishiban hexaptych, surimono
- Source:
- Art Institute of Chicago
Sparrow Dancers, from A Set of Six for the Katsushika Circle (Katsushika rokuban tsuzuki), is a [surimono](/glossary/surimono) of 1822 by Yashima Gakutei in the Art Institute of Chicago. The Katsushika circle was a kyoka poetry club closely associated with Katsushika Hokusai and his immediate pupils, and series commissioned for the group bear an unusually intimate relationship to the Hokusai school's design vocabulary. Sparrow dancers were performers who imitated the hops, flutters, and chirps of sparrows in popular dances at festivals and in the entertainment quarters, and the subject sat squarely within the playful folk-culture register that kyoka poets loved. Gakutei treats the figures with the supple, slightly caricatural line that Hokusai had pioneered for genre subjects, balancing them against generous areas of white paper for the printed verses. The deluxe surimono techniques are fully in evidence: mineral pigments tuned to a refined harmony, blind embossing in the textile patterns of the dancers' costumes, and burnished metallic powders that mark out highlights and prestige details. As one sheet of a six-print set, the image was designed to be read in sequence with its companions, each sheet sounding a variation on a unifying theme. As a Yashima Gakutei kyoka-e commissioned for the Katsushika circle, Sparrow Dancers represents the most direct kind of dialogue between Hokusai school design and the surimono tradition.
Sparrow dancers, from "A Set of Six for the Katsushika Circle (Katsushika rokuban tsuzuki)" was created by Yashima Gakutei (八島岳亭) in c. 1827/28.
Sparrow dancers, from "A Set of Six for the Katsushika Circle (Katsushika rokuban tsuzuki)" depicts birds & flowers.
