File:Album, painting (BM 2011,3049.1.1-12 24).jpg
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Captions
Summary
editalbum, painting ( ) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Artist | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
Title |
album, painting |
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Description |
English: Painting, folding album. Twelve erotic scenes. Ink, colour, gold and silver on paper.The 12 scenes are as follows:
12. Man and travelling nun in front of a screen painted with Saigyo gazing at Mount Fuji (male-female) |
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Depicted people | Representation of: Saigyō Hōshi (西行法師) | |||||||||||||||||||||||
Date |
between 1711 and 1716 date QS:P571,+1711-00-00T00:00:00Z/8,P1319,+1711-00-00T00:00:00Z/9,P1326,+1716-00-00T00:00:00Z/9 |
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Medium | paper | |||||||||||||||||||||||
Dimensions |
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Collection |
institution QS:P195,Q6373 |
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Current location |
Asia |
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Accession number |
2011,3049.1.1-12 |
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Notes | A feature of the present album is the equal balance given to scenes of male–female sex and male–male sex, with six pictures of each. Shudo-, sex with youths, was considered an alternative option to sex with women for mature males in this period, with little or no sense of social difficulty. This is reflected in popular literature of the day by authors such as Ihara Saikaku (1642–93; Clark et al 2013, cat. 31), as well as in the practices and customs of the male brothel districts near the kabuki theatres, which seem to have peaked in popularity around the Genroku era (1688–1704). The figures here are painted in the style of the leading shunga artist of the era, Torii Kiyonobu I (1664–1729), just as that style was changing around the Sho-toku era (1711–16) from the bold, expansive figures of his early paintings (Clark et al 2013, cat. 29), towards the more delicate and constrained style of his later works. The unidentified artist of the illustrated works took four of his compositions showing male–male sex directly from a signed set of prints by Kiyonobu I, which feature identifiable trainee kabuki actors providing services of prostitution to clients. However, in the paintings all the identifying crests of the actors have been removed, with the younger men now shown simply as generic ‘youths’ (wakashu). The set of prints has been accurately dated by ukiyo-e scholar Asano Shu-go-, based on the recorded periods of activity of the actors depicted, to around 1702–3. In picture ten a couple are shown making love on a sleeping mat with decorative borders, the woman lowering herself onto her lover. In picture eleven (left) two men are depicted having sex in an interior which is intensely coded with symbols of masculinity: a set of samurai armour prominent on a stand, a sword placed on the floor and four hanging-scroll paintings displayed along the walls, all of which have serious classical figure and landscape subjects completed in the masculine, Chinese-inflected ink-wash style. This composition also turns out to have a printed source, a double-page picture in the illustrated book Imayo- makura byo-bu (Pillow Screen in the Style of Today) of the 1680s by Hishikawa Moronobu (d. 1694). In the text that accompanies Moronobu’s image, we read of a samurai who sought to hide his lovemaking with a youth from his wife by saying that they were going to clean the armour together. She, of course, discovers them in flagrante and comments sarcastically to a companion that her husband seems to be galloping around the room on a human horse.… Here the figures have been redrawn to remove the women and put the youth on top, apparently admiring the paintings even as he is having sex. [TC] | |||||||||||||||||||||||
Source/Photographer | https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/A_2011-3049-1-1-12 | |||||||||||||||||||||||
Permission (Reusing this file) |
© The Trustees of the British Museum, released as CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 | |||||||||||||||||||||||
Other versions |
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Licensing
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current | 19:43, 10 May 2020 | 1,600 × 964 (142 KB) | Copyfraud (talk | contribs) | British Museum public domain uploads (Copyfraud/BM) Eroticism in the British Museum 1711 image 25 of 38 #1/1,471 |
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Software used | IrfanView |
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Date and time of digitizing | 23:18, 12 September 2013 |
File change date and time | 03:13, 21 March 2014 |
Date metadata was last modified | 03:13, 21 March 2014 |
Unique ID of original document | xmp.did:0CCBF1E10FB0E3118C4F98A7CE351589 |