画本虫撰|Picture Book of Crawling Creatures (The Insect Book) (Ehon mushi erami)

Kitagawa Utamaro

probably 1823 (later edition) · One from a set of two polychrome woodblock printed books; ink and color on paper · Asian Art

Utamaro was a pupil of the Kanō school painter Toriyama Sekien (1712–1788). Each double-page illustration of insects and reptiles has a pair of kyōka—"comic poems on the feelings of love"—inspired by the images. Here, the kyōka involve an evening cicada and a spider: Evening cicada, is it you who steals the right moment to fly into another's arms? But you cry constantly like a poor soul living one day at a time. A spider returning to his nest reminds me Of a man furtively dragging his clothes and creeping up to a lady's boudoir.

Artist

Kitagawa Utamaro

Date

probably 1823 (later edition)

Medium

One from a set of two polychrome woodblock printed books; ink and color on paper

Culture

Japan

Department

Asian Art

Credit line

Rogers Fund, 1918