Courtesans Watching the Cherry Blossom Festival
Artist/Culture
Katsukawa Shunshō 勝川 春章
(Japanese, 1726?–1792)
Date1770s
Mediumhanging scroll; ink and color on paper
Dimensions96.2 x 27.9 cm (37 7/8 x 11 in.)
ClassificationsPaintings
Credit LineJohn Chandler Bancroft Collection by exchange, 1960
Object number1960.33
Descriptionmounted as a vertical hanging scroll with porcelain ends: previously called - Young Women Watching the Cherry Blossom FestivalLabel TextCourtesans from the Yoshiwara, Edo's leading pleasure quarter, are celebrating the Cherry Blossom festival with an outing under the flowering trees. A curtain decorated with a wave motif encloses their picnic area. A painter and print designer and one of the major ukiyo-e style artists of the eighteenth century, Shunsho was famous for actor prints that captured likeness. Around 1770 he began to depict beautiful women and classical subjects. He also wrote haiku poetry and was considered a man of erudition. Near the end of his life, Shunsho devoted himself to painting which was valued more highly than woodblock prints by the people of the Edo period.ProvenanceRoland Koscherak, Flushing NY
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