歌川国貞／豊国三世 — 百人一首絵帖 第65番 相模の歌人 - Japan - Edo Period (1600-1868)

Artist: Utagawa Kunisada I / Toyokuni III (歌川国貞・三代豊国), 1786–1865
Title: Rokujūgoban — Sagami (六十五番 相模) — "No. 65, the Poem by Sagami"
Series: Hyakunin isshu eshō (百人一首絵抄) — "A Pictorial Commentary on One Hundred Poems by One Hundred Poets." From the second half of the series, where the series title no longer appears on the sheet

Publisher: Sanoya Kihei (Kikakudō), seal Sanoki 佐野喜
Censor: single nanushi seal, Yoshimura (吉村) — c. 1845/46
Signature: Ichiyōsai Toyokuni ga (一陽斎豊国画) with red toshidama seal
Technique: Woodblock print (mokuhanga) — nishiki-e (polychrome)
Format: Ōban tate-e — approx. 36 × 24 cm (14¼ × 9½ in.)
Reference: V&A, London, E.14762:19-1886 (same design)
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Condition

Good overall. The colours are well preserved — the deep blue of the outer robe and the coral-red of the sash and cords still carry their strength, and every element of the design reads clearly. Some surface rubbing. Light Edo-period album backing. Please see all photographs!
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The Scene

A young woman stands at full length, a long black-lacquered pole strewn with white blossoms laid across her shoulders; from each end, on plaited red cords with heavy tassels, hangs a black-lacquered container ribbed in bands and scattered with pale blossoms. She wears a blue outer robe over a cream under-robe patterned with blue plovers among curling waves, a broad coral sash across the front, and her hem spills forward across the whole lower third of the sheet in a long trailing sweep.

In the upper left, an open book floats against the plain ground — the format Kunisada adopted for the later designs in the series. On the left page, the poetess Sagami reclines among cushions with a fan in her hand; on the right, printed on a blue field, the prose commentary. Her poem is number 65 of the Ogura hyakunin isshu:

Urami wabi / hosanu sode dani / aru mono o / koi ni kuchinan / na koso oshikere

— worn out with resentment, her sleeves never dry from weeping; and worse than the tears is the thought of her good name rotting away with this love. Sagami was a court poet of the mid-Heian period, born around the year 1000, and one of the most admired women writers of her generation.
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The Series

Hyakunin isshu eshō is one of Kunisada's largest and most attractive poetry sets, issued by Sanoya Kihei from the mid-1840s. Each of the hundred sheets pairs a classical poem with a contemporary Edo figure — a beauty, an actor, a townswoman — the connection often oblique, a visual pun or a mood rather than an illustration. Partway through the run Kunisada dropped the series title and replaced the poem card with the open-book cartouche seen here, illustrating the poet and carrying the text. From the sixties onward many designs also fold in motifs from Nise Murasaki inaka Genji, the Genji parody Kunisada had illustrated to enormous success. Impressions of the series are held by the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts Boston and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.