Poppies

Poppies is a Shijō-school surimono by Yokoyama Seiki, dated 1821 and one of a series of large-format poetry-society prints he designed for Kyoto kyōka groups in the early 1820s. Signed Seiki utsusu ("copied by Seiki," a phrase Shijō painters used to acknowledge the school's sketching-from-life lineage descending from Maruyama Ōkyo), the print is inscribed with twenty-two poems on summer themes, identifying it as a commemorative sheet for a Kyoto poetry circle's seasonal gathering. The design centers on a cluster of poppies (keshi) in full bloom — a standard early-summer motif in the Shijō kachō-e repertoire — rendered in graduated washes against generous negative space, with the careful registration and restrained color that distinguished the best Kyoto surimono of the period. The Minneapolis Institute of Art copy (P.77.27.168) entered the collection through the Mr. and Mrs. Samuel H. Maslon gift fund and is held in the museum's Asian Art department. Together with the closely related Two Poppies surimono now in the Art Institute of Chicago and the 1826 Chickadee on a Willow Branch in the Minneapolis collection, the sheet documents Seiki's mature work in the surimono format and his standing within Kyoto's kyōka poetry world during the second decade after he completed his training under Matsumura Keibun.