Three Evening Poems (Sanseki no uchi)
Sanseki no uchi
About This Series
Three Evening Poems (Sanseki no uchi) is one of Katsushika Hokusai's small Iitsu-period cycles devoted to the inherited convention of the sanseki, the three evening poems that medieval Japanese poetic anthologies had distinguished as the supreme expressions of aki no yugure, the autumn dusk, in the classical waka tradition. The three poems, by Saigyo, Jakuren, and Fujiwara no Teika, gathered in the Shinkokin wakashu of 1205, became one of the most heavily glossed and pictorialized passages in the entire classical canon, with each verse summoning a distinctive image of melancholy evening landscape that successive generations of painters and printmakers translated into visual form. Hokusai's cycle, generally assigned to the early 1830s when he was working under the Iitsu signature and engaged across multiple fukei-e projects, treats each of the three verses with a landscape composition calibrated to the specific atmospheric and emotional register that the poem's reception had established. The subjects accordingly demand a refinement of bokashi work and tonal control that the small format constrained to a particularly concentrated vocabulary, and the prints stand among the more lyrical of Hokusai's late landscape productions, distinguished from the larger Fuji and Waterfalls cycles by their address to a specifically classical-poetic rather than topographical or perspectival subject. The cycle belongs to the body of Hokusai's literary collaborations with the inherited waka and kanshi traditions that ran throughout his career and that included his contributions to kyoka surimono, his illustrated poetic anthologies, and his major Hyakunin isshu project of the mid-1830s. Modern scholarship treats the Sanseki cycle as evidence of how thoroughly Hokusai had absorbed the classical poetic vocabulary and was prepared to translate it into fukei-e idiom, and surviving impressions are scarce and valued by collectors of his late landscape production and of the classical-poetic subject in late-Edo print culture, with representative impressions held by the Sumida Hokusai Museum and the major Western collections.
Frequently Asked Questions
Three Evening Poems (Sanseki no uchi) is one of Katsushika Hokusai's small Iitsu-period cycles devoted to the inherited convention of the sanseki, the three evening poems that medieval Japanese poetic anthologies had distinguished as the supreme expressions of aki no yugure, the autumn dusk, in the classical waka tradition. The three poems, by Saigyo, Jakuren, and Fujiwara no Teika, gathered in the Shinkokin wakashu of 1205, became one of the most heavily glossed and pictorialized passages in the entire classical canon, with each verse summoning a distinctive image of melancholy evening landscape that successive generations of painters and printmakers translated into visual form. Hokusai's cycle, generally assigned to the early 1830s when he was working under the Iitsu signature and engaged across multiple fukei-e projects, treats each of the three verses with a landscape composition calibrated to the specific atmospheric and emotional register that the poem's reception had established. The subjects accordingly demand a refinement of bokashi work and tonal control that the small format constrained to a particularly concentrated vocabulary, and the prints stand among the more lyrical of Hokusai's late landscape productions, distinguished from the larger Fuji and Waterfalls cycles by their address to a specifically classical-poetic rather than topographical or perspectival subject. The cycle belongs to the body of Hokusai's literary collaborations with the inherited waka and kanshi traditions that ran throughout his career and that included his contributions to kyoka surimono, his illustrated poetic anthologies, and his major Hyakunin isshu project of the mid-1830s. Modern scholarship treats the Sanseki cycle as evidence of how thoroughly Hokusai had absorbed the classical poetic vocabulary and was prepared to translate it into fukei-e idiom, and surviving impressions are scarce and valued by collectors of his late landscape production and of the classical-poetic subject in late-Edo print culture, with representative impressions held by the Sumida Hokusai Museum and the major Western collections.
The Three Evening Poems (Sanseki no uchi) series contains 1 prints, created by Katsushika Hokusai.
The Three Evening Poems (Sanseki no uchi) series was created by Katsushika Hokusai (葛飾北斎).
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