Description

After a major fire in Edo (now Tokyo), the Yoshiwara licensed brothel district was relocated to an area accessed via boat along the Sumida River, giving rise to many compositions depicting travel there. Here, attendants with checkered robes serve refreshment to a client. A figure at the fore of the boat tends to the kitchen. A courtesan at the aft, or rear, surveys the river scene. Acquaintances converse in modest commuter boats, and fishers put in to a tiny island. The boat is near the entrance to the San’ya Canal, where pleasure-seekers would disembark.

Provenance

(David Newman, London, UK, sold to Mr. and Mrs. Kelvin Smith); The Kelvin Smith Collection, Cleveland, OH, given by Mrs. Kelvin [Eleanor Armstrong] Smith [1899–1998] to the Cleveland Museum of Art (?–1985); The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (1985–)

Pleasure Boat on the Sumida River

Teisai Hokuba

1800s

Accession Number

1985.262

Medium

Hanging scroll; ink and color on silk

Dimensions

Overall: 153.3 x 76.2 cm (60 3/8 x 30 in.); Painting only: 40 x 55.3 cm (15 3/4 x 21 3/4 in.)

Classification

Painting

Museum

The Cleveland Museum of Art

Cleveland, United States

Credit Line

The Kelvin Smith Collection, given by Mrs. Kelvin Smith

Background & Context

Background Story

Teisai Hokuba (active early 19th century) was a Japanese painter known for the elegantly composed genre paintings of Edo life that make him one of the accomplished painters of the Edo period. Pleasure Boat on the Sumida River from the 1800s depicts a pleasure boat on the Sumida River in the elegantly composed, characterful manner that distinguishes Hokuba's best work from the more general genre painting of his contemporaries. The Sumida River was the most important waterway in Edo (now Tokyo), and pleasure boats on the Sumida were one of the most popular subjects in Edo period painting, representing the seasonal customs and recreational life of the city.

Cultural Impact

Pleasure Boat on the Sumida River is important in the history of Japanese genre painting because it depicts one of the most popular subjects in Edo life—a pleasure boat on the Sumida River—in the elegantly composed, characterful manner of the early 19th century. Pleasure boats on the Sumida—representing the seasonal customs and recreational life of Edo—were one of the most important subjects in Edo period painting, and the 1800s painting shows this tradition at its most elegantly composed.

Why It Matters

Pleasure Boat on the Sumida River is Hokuba's elegantly composed Edo genre painting: a pleasure boat on the Sumida River rendered in the characterful manner of one of the accomplished painters of the Edo period. The 1800s painting shows the seasonal customs and recreational life of Edo in one of the most important subjects in Japanese genre painting.

Related Artworks

Courtesan Reading a Letter