Object Details
- Label
- This painting employs traditional symbolic elements-prunus, bamboo, magpie, and narcissus. In combination they form a rebus-a visual pun-that indicates felicitous beginnings. This elegant and lyrical painting, full of realistic detail, achieves its effect through the heavily sized and closely woven silk that holds the ink like a shimmering film on the surface. Baiitsu's composition contrasts dense vegetation with open space that is penetrated by the magpie weighing heavily on a bamboo branch.
- Collection
- Freer Gallery of Art Collection
- Exhibition History
- Feathered Ink (August 27, 2022 to February 20, 2023)
- Arts of Japan: Edo Aviary and Poetic License (February 2 to August 4, 2013)
- Birds and Beasts in Japanese Art (January 31 to July 18, 2004)
- Beyond the Legacy--Anniversary Acquisitions of the Freer Gallery of Art (October 11, 1998 to April 11, 1999)
- Data Source
- Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery
- Artist
- Yamamoto Baiitsu 山本梅逸 (1783-1856)
- Date
- ca. 1832-1852
- Period
- Edo period
- Credit Line
- Gift of Klaus F. Naumann, in honor of the 75th Anniversary of the Freer Gallery of Art
- Medium
- Ink and color on silk
- Dimensions
- H x W (image): 133.5 x 51.6 cm (52 9/16 x 20 5/16 in)
- Type
- Painting
