The Work:      Another early hand-colored Nagasaki print (30.5 x 44 cm) shows two Dutchman and an Oriental servant on the left side (as Picture of a Hollander ( Hollander Jin Dzu )) and three Chinese on the right side (as Picture of Chinese ( To-Jin Dzu )).  The two Dutchman are military/naval officers and their servant carries a closed umbrella over his right shoulder.  Two of the three Chinese are apparently mandarins; the third, to the left of them, is a servant or porter who carries on his left shoulder a medium-sized dwarfed potted tree which is possibly a blossoming plum in a weeping-willow/umbrella style.  It appears that the original trunk several centimeters above the soil line was removed and a branch near this new top has grown (been trained to grow?) upward and become the new apex.  The container is a slightly top flaring cylinder without a distinct lip and whose upper half has been decorated in some dark fashion. 2 

The Work:      The panels which make up this 166 cm (65") tall Japanned Cabinet are decorated with figures, a flowering tree in a pot (on the front left panel), and a pagoda.  The composition, dated from about 1685, though attractive, lacks the oriental flair for design.  The cabinet rests on a finely carved silver-gilt stand, and it forms a pair with another made of oriental lacquer.  The cabinets are to be found at The Vyne, Hampshire. 3

The Work:      The Potted Dwarf Trees is also the name of an unattributed six panel screen (ink, color, and gold on paper, 152.6 cm H x 377.0 cm W) from the early eighteenth century showing a bunraku performance of this story on the stage of the Takemoto theater in Osaka.   The three snow-covered potted trees -- from left to right: pine, bare plum, and blossomed cherry -- are on an engawa to the right of the horse stall on the two left-most panels.  The three puppeteers manipulating the "actors" are onstage in panels two through four.  Players who supplied music and dialogue are seated upon an elevated dias in the two right-most panels. 
     Originally imported from China, bunraku or puppet drama had its performance for a long period restricted to religious circles.  Gradually it became an entertainment for the masses.  It included dramatic ballads sung or chanted to the music of the samisen.  In a sense, it was kabuki performed by puppets.  Kabuki had developed in the early seventeenth century as a form of theater for the common man, definitely not aristocratic and solemn like Noh. 4

The Work:      Potted Plants, an extra large oban (approx. 60 x 30 cm), depicts a potted landscape contained in a wooden vessel whose edges and sides are apparently dark metal stripped with light colored nailheads.  At least two pieces of rockery (the larger one appearing to have both an arch and a through-hole), some small flowering plants, and a vertical section of bamboo back and center share the scene with a thick curving-trunked dwarf tree bearing light and medium colored 5-petal flowers and thin sprays of small dark two or three-sectioned leaves.  The container on cloud feet is shown in an attempt at perspective.

The Artist:      Torii Kiyomasu (1679-1718?), probably the younger brother of Torii Kiyonobu [1664-1729, founder of the Torii sub-school which applied itself chiefly to theatrical subjects and at the end of the seventeenth century monopolized the production of images of Kabuki actors for signboards, illustrated programs and souvenir prints in a bold style described as “gourd-shaped legs and wriggling worm line.”].  Kiyomasu’s work is rare today -- only some 80 known theater prints by six publishers -- although a play-bill dated 1693 and illustrated books from 1703 and 1712 are credited to him.  5

The Work:      Uki-e of Saimyoji Tsuneyo Setchu No Hachinoki (Perspective Print of Hachinoki in the Snow at Saimyoji Tsuneyo) The three trees are in deep wooden containers with cloud handles.  A man with raised blade is in the middle of the picture ready to strike at one of the trees.  That one and the pine to the right are on the engawa.  The third tree is on the ground just past the edge of the porch.

The Artist:      Attributed to Kiyomasu Torii II (1720-1760)  6

The Work:      Flower vendor, a hosoban (approx. 15 x 33 cm) published by Igaya Kan'emon c.1720s/30s, depicts a woman with two double-shelf benches, each shelf holding a planted pot.  Each bench has a pair of alternating b&w colored ropes which meet above the top shelf going through a wide eyelet in a shoulder poll used to carry the benches.  From the bottom of the bench to the top of the upper planting is perhaps the equivalent of nearly 5 ffet tall.  The left bottom shelf holds a deep oval pot having a crackle glaze and holding at least two types of leaved plants and maybe a stone.  The left upper shelf holds a narrow deep wooden box having "cloud handles" and holding a couple long curvy woody-stemmed flowering plants.  The taller plant has a tag with calligraphy.&bsp; The bottom right shelf holds a slightly wider wooden box having "cloud handles" and a variety of plants, one of which has a thicker curved woody-stem.  The upper right shelf, lastly, has a deep round bowl with possibly tall chrysanthemums, again with what apparently is an identification tag attached near the top.  The two wooden boxes might be described as miniature landscapes.  This print is important because it shows the earliest known use of the shoulder carrier for potted plant transportation.  (The publisher Igaya Kan'emon was active in prints starting in the 1690s until the business was taken over in 1860.  He became one of the most active publishers during the early years, especially during the 1730s and 1740s when he nearly dominated the field of actor prints.  Libretti were Igaya's main business.  During 1811 and 1813 he was appointed four times to serve as a censor (gyōji) in an attempt by the government to regulate the print market.  In the late 1830s and 1840s he worked mostly with Kunisada.)

The Artist:      Nichimura Shigenaga (1697?-1756) was born in Edo and became a self-taught artist, not the student of a lineage of artists.  His earliest work appeared around 1719 and he became a rival of the Okumura School.  He sometimes imitated their style but also was influenced by Nishikawa Sukenobu (1671-1750) and Torii Kiyonobu I.  Shigenaga is known for having a wide variety of subjects in several different formats.  He greatly influenced Suzuki Harunobu and Ishikawa Toyonobu, who are sometimes seen as his students.  7

The Work:      Female Version of "The Potted Trees" ( Onna Hachi-no-ki ), horizontal hosoban (15.4 x 29.5 cm or 6-1/16 x 11-5/8 in.), ink on paper, with hand-applied color and nikawa.
     A woman is about to cut down the blossoming plum planted in a broad, shallow round pot in the center of the picture.  The intact pine in a deep wooden container is behind her to the right.  The third tree, to the left in a deep round pot -- looking almost like the lower two-thirds of a hollow spehere -- has been cut off already.  A bonze is to the left and behind this third tree.  A suit of armour with long sword is behind him in the house off the engawa they are on.  A second woman stands between the suit of armour and the first woman.

The Artist:      Nichimura Shigenaga  8

The Work:      Parody of the Noh Drama 'Hachinoki', an oban (approx. 39 x 25 cm) this shows a woman in front center about to cut down a potted cherry (?), while two other women to the left watch.  A pine is between them and a plum (?) is to the right of the cherry.  Three other women in an open room to the right/back are watching while preparing a meal.  An older man with a horse behind the scene looks down from left/back.  Interestingly, the pots are obviously constructed from wooden boards.
     The parody style was an eighteenth century reworking of scenes from classical stories and historical episodes in contemporary settings and costumes to fit the tastes of the so-called gay quarters, the pleasure/prostitution/entertainment districts of the cities.  This part of Edo was called Yoshiwara, literally, "field of bulrushes," an area set aside in 1612 as a legal pleasure area.  This pleased men of vulgar tastes and served to make the classical characters more familiar to the general public.  The actual faces of some of the persons in the parodies were those of friends or of courtesans known to the artists. 

The Artist:      Torii Kiyomitsu (aka Kiyomitsu I, born Kamejiro, presumably as the second son of Kiyomasu II, 1735-1785) lived in Edo and was the son and pupil of Torii Kiyomasu.  His earliest known works are illustrated books from the late 1740s.  His specialty was theater-scenes with female figures, Kabuki theatre placards and playbills, and illustrations for popular novels.  The leading artist in Ukiyo-e circles during the first half of the 1760s, as the most active and prolific designer of active prints, his output decreased after that time.  Among his many students was Kiyonaga who then succeeded him as the head of the Torii School. 9

The Work:      One large print depicts dwarf potted trees varied in both species and style from Itō Ihei (or Ibei)'s nursery.  No tako -style trees -- pines with long, wavy "octopus arm" branches -- are illustrated.  All the trees, however, are planted in deep containers. Between these years, the artist made several prints of Itō Ihei's collection. 

The Subject:      "Itō Ihei (his exact dates of birth and death are unknown) was a gardener and, later, a nurseryman in the early Edo period.  Because of his great knowledge of azaleas, he was known as Kirishima-ya, or 'Mr. Kirishima' -- Kirishima being one of the most popular azalea types of the day.  He lived in the Somei District (present-day Komagome, Toshima Ward) in Edo, Japan's capital, during the latter half of the seventeenth century.  His family was of the peasant class and had resided in Somei, a major horticultural center, for generations.  When the demand for garden plants to landscape the castle gardens of Edo increased, the Itō family began to specialize in ornamental plants and gained a considerable reputation as gardeners.
       "In this fashion Itō came to the attention of the feudal lord Tōdō Takahisa and was employed to plant and maintain his castle grounds in Somei.  Itō gained access to and expertise in the cultivation of a broad array of ornamentals through his work for Tōdō, as it was the custom in feudal Japanese gardens to regularly renew the plantings in order to maintain the original character of the landscape.  Also through his work, Itō acquired an extensive collection of azaleas, so many that he became an azalea authority.  [In 1692 he wrote a five volume treatise called Kinshū Makura ( A Brocade Pillow ).  This was the first monograph on azaleas either in Japan or elsewhere.]  To have assembled the array of types described in A Brocade Pillow was a remarkable feat, even by today's standards.  We can assume that during the process of developing his collection, Itō encountered the problems of proliferating synonyms and wrongly named plants that still plague us today.  This must have prompted him to establish a standard system for describing azaleas and then use that system to describe the varieties in cultivation at the time.  A most impressive result of his efforts was the creation of a coding system to distinguish flowering seasons of satsuki (171 types) and tsutsuji (161 types) that appears in A Brocade Pillow.  This makes Itō's work exceptionally useful and different from any other works of the period.  No other horticultural book for the next two centuries incorporates such an essential technique.
       "In addition to A Brocade Pillow, Itō Ihei wrote a general horticultural text, The Silk and Soil Flower Bed ( Kadan Chikinsho ), which was later expanded by his son Masatake.  Masatake, also known as Itō Ihei IV, was to become even more famous than his father and, because of his numerous writings, was granted the special honor of visiting the shogun's famous Fukiage Goen garden of Edo castle."

        [In 1695 was published Kadan Chikinshō by San-nojō Hanado in Edo and Kyoto.  (Chikinshō means "A view of the earth's raiment.")  This major six volume work covered the entire range of Japanese ornamental trees and shrubs.  It was also one of the earliest to have descriptions of momiji, the Japanese red maple ( Acer palmatum ).  Cherry and camellia are also described, as were the very deep purple Noda-Fuji wisteria ( W. floribunda, D.C.), the No-Fuji, white wisteria, and other varieties which had already been cultivated for at least three centuries. 
        Fifteen years later, Zōhō Chikinshō ( Revised, enlarged Chikinshō ) by Ibei Itō, a famous nurseryman and scholar with an encyclopedic knowledge.  It is said that he was one of the first specialists of miniature potted trees, and that he was the son of Hanado.  This illustrated treatise in eight volumes covered flowers and other plants.  The artist of this first series seems to have laid out a whole group of specimens (representing a natural habitat) more or less overlapping each other, and to have then drawn all together.  Each kind is represented with a name-tag attached.
        Maple leaves, which have been considered by the Japanese as "flowers" because of their bright fall coloring, were also included in the work.  Thirty-six cultivars of momiji were precisely illustrated in Volume IV, and included some popular for dwarfed tree culture even today.  Associated with the name of each cultivar is an old, famous poem. 
        Kōeki Chikinshō ( Publicly useful Chikinshō ), also by Itō, was published in 1719.  As Vol. IX - XVI, these were drawn in a style quite different from that of the first eight volumes.  The artist had drawn -- or the wood-engraver had cut -- single full-page figures with very unequal success.  Maples were represented in the third volume. 
       Finally, in 1733 Chikinshō Furuko ( Chikinshō additions ), was published as a supplementary series as Vol. I - III.  Again by botanist Itō, these were also illustrated in a different style than the previous sixteen volumes.  Some sixty-four momiji cultivars are listed here.]

The Artist:      Torii Kiyoharu (b. Kondo Kiyoharu, active 1705-1730's), was a pupil of Kiyonobu (1664-1729), who was influenced by Moronobu (see below).  Kiyoharu lived in Edo, illustrated many popular novels, actor critiques, and guides to the Yoshimura pleasure quarter. His specialty was female figures.  He was also active as a painter. 10

The Artist:      Yanagisawa Ki-en (aka Ryū Rikyō, b. Yanagisawa Rikyo, 1704-1758) would eventually be seen as one of the founders of the Nanga school.  Born in Edo as the younger son of a well-to-do family of feudal retainers near Nara, Ki-en was raised by his older brother after the retirement of their father in 1710.  Some eight years later, Ki-en was accused of some "misdemeanor" -- of unknown nature, but possibly some pardonable infringement of the strict clan rules, such as an independent turn of mind might commit -- and he was prevented from assuming his proper rank in the family.  Two years later he was reinstated.
     A man of many talents, rich, learned and versatile, he began by studying the Kanō school style.  Becoming dissatisfied with it, Ki-en turned to the Chinese models, and eventually adopted the Chinese sounding name of Ryū Rikyō.  His compositions are very formal and static.  They were influenced by academic Chinese pictures which were owned in Japan and could be traced back to the older styles of the Yuan and Ming dynasties.  Whether his art was, properly speaking, inspired by the "southern" school can be doubted.  The hard line drawing presumably imitates woodblock pictures. 
      "From the beginning of the eighteenth century a renewed Japanese interest in things Chinese was an ascendant fashion buttressed by government endorsements of Confucianism as a state philosophy.  Kien's education occurred within the intersecting vertices of high government and cultural circles.  Unlike a professonal painter, Kien was groomed to be a man of varied cultural achievements, modeled on the notion of the Chinese literatus.  The vast resources of imported libraries and artifacts provided the considerably isolated Japanese with a broad view of Ming dynasty (1368-1644) culture...  Printed books featuring examples of Chinese painting and calligraphy were becoming more widely available...  Kien eventually settled in Kōriyama [the family domain near Nara] and from there exerted wide influence as a teacher, practioner, and catalyst of talent in the region that included Osaka and Kyoto." 11

The Work:      The Parlor Game of Hand-Sumo/Finger Sign Game at Shin Yoshiwara ( Shin Yoshiwara Zashiki Kenzumo ), an extra large oban, this is a hand-colored print ( urushi-e ) depicting a pine in a tray on a stand to the right in the central room shown.  Note that perspective is only used in the center of this picture. 
     The tree itself is not in question: it has distinct long left, apex and short right branches, all quite horizontal, and there is a jin at the top of the trunk.  There is a plant with yellow leaves in front of the pine, and apparently small round rocks as a surface dressing.  A plant with higher growing different orange/brown leaves is behind the pine.  What puts the exact nature of this miniature landscape in question is its container: an oval pot, possibly metallic, with large nailhead design around its edge and a large flaring base, which rests on an ornate table stand.  Ikebana or artistic dwarf potted tree?

The Artist:      Furuyama Moromosa (active c. 1715-1740) lived in Edo and was a pupil of Moronobu.  [Hishikawa Moronobu (1625-1694) was born in Awa, died in Edo, and founded the Utagawa school.  He was the first great master to make the Ukiyo-e school as designers for wood-engraving a real art.]  Moromosa also studied under Moroshige, another pupil of Moronobu.  Moromosa also specialized in female figures. 12

The Work:      Tea Server Watching a Cuckoo Fly Above a Temple, a chūban (28.4 x 20.8 cm) from the late 1760's, this shows a medium-sized tree -- possibly a Japanese red maple ( momiji ) -- in a large deep and round light-colored pot with a wide lip.  The container rests on a flat thick stone to the left of a large low table on which is set a tea service.  A woman is in front of and between the tree and table. 

The Artist:      Suzuki Harunobu (aka Choeiken, 1725?-1770) lived in Edo, probably was a pupil of Shigenaga, and was influenced by Toyonobu, another of Shigenaga's students.  Harunobu's life marks the most important epoch in Ukiyo-e history, for he brought into being true polychromatic prints, and has the earliest examples in which a background is introduced.  His prints, close to 900 which were only made during the last decade of his life, are valued for their beauty, charm and rarity, lyricism and purity of feeling.  His delicate and sensual female figures dominated the print market.  His designs are predominantly in chūban (medium-print) 19 x 26cm size.  He also created pictorial calendars (egoyomi), parody pictures (mitate-e), several erotic works, very few paintings, and illustrated some seventeen books.  His works gave rise to many imitators. 13

The Work:      Parody of "The Potted Trees" ( Mitate Hachi-no-ki ), two chūban (approx. 30 x 19 cm) which show a woman in the left panel about to cut down the potted plum tree in the dead of the snowy winter.  The potted cherry and pine are left of the plum, and all three are on a low table.  A second woman watches from a porch on the right panel.
     Popular with the urban middle classes were prints which depicted the daily lives of women and children with wit and parody. 

The Artist:      Suzuki Harunobu  14

The Work:      Parody of "The Potted Trees" ( Mitate Hachi-no-ki ), a second composition on the theme has a woman standing in snow behind a snow-covered table upon which rest the three snow-covered trees, each in a small deep pot with a wide lip.  The woman holds the knife upside down in her right hand as she uses it to lean against the edge of the table.

The Artist:      Suzuki Harunobu  15

The Work:      Twilight Snow of Hachinoki (Hachinoki no bosetsu), from the series Fashionable Eight Views of Noh Plays (Furyu utai hakkei)  A long vertical print showing a woman sweeping snow off the roof of the porch, under which is a table with two trees showing in deep wooden containers with cloud handles.  The pine on the right is only partly visible.  Normally the third tree would then be further to the right, however a smaller tree is visible just behind the leg of the table.  In a tall round pot with narrower bottom edge, this is actually a perhaps one inch diameter stump, perhaps three inches tall and sporting a slightly ramified thin branch off of the left edge near the top of the stump.

The Artist:      Suzuki Harunobu  16

The Work:      Parody of the Chinese Monks Kanzan and Jittoku, shows two women examining a scroll.  Behind them in the tokonoma to the right is a potted tree. 

The Artist:      Suzuki Harunobu 17

The Work:      ? Edo Meisho Somei No Uekiya (The Garden of Ihei Florist At Somei Edo).  Vertical koban (22 x 15.8 cm) print (nishiki-e) of ink and color on paper.  There is a shaded growing bed just above the center of the picture.  (See #10 above for bio of "Ihei Florist".)  Provenance/Ownership History: Spring 1913, purchased by William S. and John T. Spaulding from Frank Lloyd Wright in Japan; December 1, 1921, given by William S. and John T. Spaulding to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.  (See also listing for Mar 5 at www.phoenixbonsai.com/Days/DaysMar.html.  It is not known if this was one of the prints exhibited by Wright.)

The Artist:      Suzuki Harunobu 18

The Work:      The actors Ichikawa Komazō II as Hanamori Kisaku and Yamashita Kinsaku II as Oume in the play "Nue no mori ichiyō no mato," Nakamura Theater, XI/1770, a chūban from 1770 shows in the upper right quatrant an open-white-blossomed old plum in a deep round container resting on a bureau of sorts.  The gnarly old tree, rising up slightly before bending sharply to the left, is pale greenish in color and appears to be surrounded by moss/grass of similar hue at its base.

The Artist:      Ippitsusai Bunchō (aka Soyoan, 1725-1794) who lived in Edo and worked between 1755 and 1790.  He was a follower of and co-painter with Shunshō (1729-1792, one of the Katsukawa leading artists of Ukiyo-e, particularly in both original and printed artist-portraiture).  Bunchō, a writer of comic poems and an actor, specialized in female figures (especially during his last two decades) and actors, and also was influenced by Harunobu. 19

The Work:      Shin-Yoshiwara sōjimai no zu (View of group amusement at the New-Yoshiwara) from the series Uki-e (Perspective Images), an ōban by publisher Matsumura Yahei in the 1770s, includes in the lower left corner dwarf potted pine.  Perhaps equivalent to 18" tall, the large curved white trunk has a healthy amount of somewhat rounded foliage on top.  Its pot is partially hidden behind a sectional railing, and a man is seated to the side of it looking at the tree.  About two dozen persons are busy to the center and right of the picture.  A front right "conga"-line has formed (cf. Torii Kiyomitsu entry with note 15 here and Furuyama Moromosa entry with note 8 above).

The Artist:      Toyoharu (1735-1814) was from Toyooka in Tajima Province in Western Japan.  He went to Kyoto and first studied painting under the Kantō School master Tsuruzawa Tangei (1688-1769).  Around 1763 he moved to Edo and became a student of the print artist Toriyama Sekien (1712-1788).  Toyoharu was also influenced by Ishikawa Toyonobu and Suzuki Harunobu.  Toyoharu was the founder of the Utagawa school, so named because he was living in Udagawachō in Edo's Shiba district c.1768.  His main students were Toyokuni and Toyohiro.  Toyoharu was especially important for his horizontal prints using the Western technique of one-point vanishing perspective.  These perspective prints illustrate famous Japanese sights, temples, theatres, and teahouses, as well as Occidental scenes from history and legend.  Next to horizontal prints, Toyoharu did also several hashira-e ("pillar prints").  After working for less than ten different publishers during his entire career, he seemed to gave stopped designing prints in the 1780s and turned to paintings, with a few kabuki programs and billboards also designed.  In 1796, he was appointed head of painters working on the restoration of the Tokugawa shrine in Nikko. 20

The Work:      Pine, Bamboo and Plum in Yoshiwara (Seiro Shochikubai): Kisegawa of the Matsuba-ya House.  A lovely courtesan is seated upright in the center of the print and in front of her to the right and past center bottom is a young girl, slightly forward leaning with hands next to her knees on the ground.  Behind the older woman is a koto, a 13-string musical instrument.  Both women are looking at the lower left-hand edge which holds a beautiful old medium-sized pine in a dark green cylindrical container resting on a light round stone trivet.  The thin lipped pot has a raised cloud layer pattern along its sides and three flattened ball feet can be seen on the underside.  The pine shows good rough bark, some good curves, a thin first branch to the right, and foliage pads with distinct needles.

The Artist:      Eishosai Chōki (fl. 1760-1809), was a pupil of Toriyama Sekien (1712-1788), possibly his adopted son.  Chōki is acclaimed for creating the most poetic and beautiful portraits of woman, epitomizing Japanese art and ideals of his time.  In the late 1780s he produced two chūban series, each related to the popular theme of the "Eight Views."  He also did pillar prints (hashira-e) and pictures of flowers and birds (kachō-e).  It is known that he lodged with the publisher Tsutaya Jūzaburō (1750-1797), who produced most of his series.  (Tsutaya joined the publisher Urokogataya around 1774, whose works included the Guide to Yoshiwara since 1735.  Urokogataya was by far the most active publisher of actor prints in the first half of the eighteenth century.  In 1776 the Yoshiwara-born Tsutaya took over and his firm continued these guides on a regular basis until 1836.  In the same year, he also produced other books and soon engaged Hokusai, Kiyonaga, Utamaro, Chōki, and others.)  All told, Chōki worked for less than a dozen publishers. 21

The Work:      "Appearance of Gardener" in Fuzoku Azuma no Nishiki (Beauties of the East as Reflected in Fashions).  From c.1770's to pre-1790 comes a print of a dwarf tree vendor showing a few pots.  Two women on the left (one with a baby) are looking down at a pair of trees along with three small pots of accessory plants (adonis ?).  These specimens are on a square board which is connected by four thin bamboo poles to a crossbar extending to the right.  The counterbalancing right side board is out of the picture.  The merchant who brought the trees is crouched down on the right of the plants and is talking to the women.  The larger tree is an old plum; the smaller to the left is, perhaps, a literati-style pine.

The Artist:       Torii Kiyonaga (b. Seki Shinsuke, 1752-1815), son of a book dealer, was from Uraga (perhaps thirty miles across the bay from Edo) and later went to Edo where he became a pupil of Kiyomitsu (see above).  After his teacher died in 1785, he was adopted by the family and inherited the Torii estate.  It had already for four generations specialized in work closely related with the theater.  Though actor prints in and billboards were his specialty at the beginning of his career he is especially known for his beautiful female figures, the main domain of Kiyonaga's artistic creativeness.  Between 1780 and 1788 he was the leading artist of Ukiyo-e, influencing all contemporaries.  For forty years, between 1771 and 1811, he also worked as illustrator of picture programs (e-banzuke) and books.  He was the last of the great artists of the Torii family. 22

The Work:      Eight Famous Interior Scenes, in the mid-1770's.  One of these was A Young Girl Reading a Letter as a Woman Looks On, a chūban -sized print.  Left of center can be seen a potted plum (?) in white blossom on the orange-colored engawa.  The white deep round container has a slightly scalloped lip, and holds the amber, orange and black trunked tree rising out of amber-colored soil. 
     Many prints were produced based on the well-known series of Chinese paintings, Eight Famous Views of Xiao Xiang.  Harunobu did a highly acclaimed series in this fashion, as also then did 

The Artist:      Torii Kiyonaga  23

The Work:      Winter Evening ( Banto koetsu ), from c.1779, is a nishiki-e chūban from the series Eight Views at the Four Seasons ( Shiki Hakkei ).  A medium-sized snow-covered pine is in a large deep pot outside the doorway on the engawa. 

The Artist:      Torii Kiyonaga  24

The Work:      Entertaining Clients on a Veranda in the Fudo Rakudo District, 1785 (22.2 x 16.3 cm) in two parts published in the work Picture-book of Hills of Fair Views ( Ehon Monomi ga Oka ).  This shows life in Edo throughout the year as recorded by one of the foremost Ukiyo-e artists.  In the right-hand print, just left of and above center, partially hidden by a standing woman, is a wooden trapezoidal box, nailheads partially visible along the edge and bottom corner.  This holds a wide branching pine, possibly one branch stretching far left (behind the woman) and a separate plant branching the equivalent of a meter or more far right.  Small flat stone slabs are on the soil surface, a close bundle of different but classical pine branches is upright in the rear right corner of the box behind a cylindrical rock.  The container seems too deep for this to be just a cut flower and branch arrangement.  The box has a black indented, low pedestal base which appears to be resting in the center of some sheet/rug-covered low raised platform.

The Artist:      Torii Kiyonaga  25

The Work:      Actor Onoe Matsusuke, a Courtesan and Her Attendant is an aiban (approx. 33 x 23 cm) showing a large pine with other plants in a tray on a stand on the right edge behind the actor. 

The Artist:      Torii Kiyonaga 26

The Artist:      Utamaro Kitagawa (b. Toriyama Shimbi, 1753-1806) was the star of the golden age of Japanese printmaking (1789-1801) and the most celebrated artist of women of the whole Ukiyo-e school.  He studied under the painter Toriyama Sekien.  Over the course of his highly successful career he produced prints for no fewer than fifty-two publishers.  His specialty was the female figure in over 120 series, over two thousand prints.  He excelled at sensuous depictions, at conveying the sense of the glistening skin of the female body and capturing the most delicate nuances of emotional states.  This was in a very different manner from Kiyonaga, who Utamaro replaced, or Masanobu.  Furthermore he created approximately 30 paintings, and illustrations for almost one hundred books.  However, some of the Utamaro's prints contained political messages that the authorities considered dangerous, and in 1804 he was even arrested and briefly imprisoned because of them.  27

The Work:      In the Grounds of a Tea-House (1786-1788), from the series Pictures of Pastimes ( Koraku Zu ).  Eleven people are seen in this triptych, which has a distinguished-looking pine in the lower right corner of the right-hand panel.  The tree is in a deep round pot, which has a design of dragons in relief.  Behind and to the left of the pine is seated a gentleman holding an opened folding fan. 

The Artist:      Utamaro Kitagawa  28

The Work:      Ladies on a Terrace by the Sea, from 1788 to 1790, is the painting which depicts courtesans at a seaside pavilion.  A large possibly rock-grown pine with a flowering plant beside it is on a large flat round white dish, which has dark blue on its outside.  This is all on a raised platform left and back of center. 

The Artist:      Utamaro Kitagawa  29

The Work:      Yûkun Nana-Komachi, from c.1804, depicts a reclining courtesan leaning over and closely examining what appears to be a bloosom-laden plum bonsai.  The print is signed "Utamaro hitsu" and the publisher was Idzumi-ya Ichibei (Kansendô).  The title here actually refers to the series in which seven courtesans are shown in comparison with seven episodes in the life of the legendary waka poetess Ono no Komachi (c.825-c.900).

The Artist:      Utamaro Kitagawa  30

The Work:      Evening Glow at Seta, one of the Eight Scenes of Omi, a chūban depicts two women conversing on the engawa.  Behind the standing woman right of center are two bare dwarf potted trees peaking out around the corner of the screened wall.  The container to the left and behind is pale and rounded without a distinct lip.  The pot to the right is light colored and slightly flaring with a thin lip.  The tree in the left pot has a very wide trunk and appears to have been cut off a few centimeters above the soil line, all branches growing from just below or at the cut.  What can be seen of the righthand tree is made up of perhaps a few thin trunks.

The Artist:      Kitao Masanobu (aka Santo Kyoden, 1761-1816, son of a pawnbroker), a highly talented pupil of Kitao Shigemasa (1739-1819, haiku poet name of Karan, and a collaborator with Shunshu), who was a student of Shigenaga.  Masanobu was better known in his day as a poet under the name of Santo Kioden.  His book illustrations of "Yoshiwara Beauties and their Autographs" is famous.  His single-sheet prints are very fine and very rare, frequently there is no signature on them.  Punished in 1789 during a period of reforms for his satirical illustrations, he ceased using his Masanobu name and ceased his activities as an Ukiyo-e painter and printmaker. 31

The Work:      Actor Ichikawa Monnosuke II as Issun Tokubei, a hosoban (approx. 30 x 15 cm) which depicts a somewhat forlorn character resting his chin on his hands, his elbows on the carrying pole for two loads of dwarf potted trees and other plants.  A medium grass-leaved plant with a half dozen blades (equivalent to perhaps 30 cm tall) and a tall but thin somewhat rose-like plant (nearly one and a half meters tall) share the left carrying board with a potted tree.  The latter is in a slightly top-flaring container with lip and dark "drip" color decoration on its upper half.  The tree itself appears to have a fairly good-sized trunk which comes up into a "Y" a few centimeters above the soil line – the left branch having been cut off and its stub  covered by a piece of material tied in place, while the right branch extends up and slightly to the right dividing again.  The few leaves seen suggest a privet. 
     On the right carrying board are at least four plants: a low bowl with fat dark lip holding unknown material, a rounded cylindrical pot without lip bearing a vertical club-like object (a cactus perhaps?), a mostly hidden low container with a long thin-leaved plant, and, barely half visible on the right edge of the scroll, a medium-sized pine in a pot similar to that of the left board's dwarf potted tree, except with a geometrical design on the middle vertical half of the container’s exterior. 

The Artist:      Kitao Masanobu  32

The Work:      A fine early print is Three Court Ladies on the Engawa in Winter Time.  The center sheet of this triptych shows a medium-sized pine with a large trunk, four distinct foliage layers, and some exposed roots in a deep round pot having a wide lip.  The ladies are apparently looking at this snow-covered tree. 

The Artist:      Utagawa Toyokuni (aka Ichiyosai, 1769-1825) son of a doll-carver, lived and worked in Edo, and was a pupil of Toyoharu.  Toyokuni was the most prominent artist of that school.  His output of prints, mostly of actors and figure-studies, was enormous -- over ninety print series, many hundreds of other single sheets, over 400 books, and a few paintings for over one hundred publishers -- but varies in quality. In 1794 he began a revolutionary series of actor portraits which would become the standard format in the nineteenth century.  He had a large number of pupils himself including Kunisada, Kunimasa, Kuniyasu, and Kuniyoshi, but showed a marked and rapid decline after 1805.  (The year before he was one of the artists who were manicled for fifty days for illustrating a politically dangerous figuree in his prints.) 33

The Work:      The Hero Asahino Saburo (c.1795), a nishiki-e oban shows the subject reclining on the ground.  A long sword rests on a large cloth covered square above him, the point of the scabbard off the left center edge, the handle of the sword arcing over the hero's head.  Three thin books lay on the ground in front of him, three small illustrations with verse off of his left elbow, and towards the right corner of the illustration is a scraggly old medium-sized dwarfed plum in a somewhat rude cylindrical pot with thin lip. 

The Artist:      Torin Tsutsumi (fl.1780-1820), a painter of the Kanō school, he founded a school which produced mainly book-illustrations.  He is said to have been one of Hokusai’s teachers. 34

The Work:      A writing-box with a fixed frame for the closely fitting inkstone and water-dropper was crafted around the middle of the eighteenth century.  The box measures 3.2 cm H x 19.7 cm L x 18.1 cm W.  An ornamental pine (with two dozen distinct and needled foliage poms), plants and rocks in sand in a shallow, elliptical three-footed dish decorate the lid.  The background is black lacquer dusted with mother-of-pearl, and a design in relief of black lacquer over red and gold.  The interior of the box and lid is decorated with a continuous design of individual plants of autumn murakika flower in gold dusted lacquer and red ochre on a ground of dense red-yellow lacquer over gold/silver dusted black lacquer. 35

The Work:      A partly snow-covered dwarf pine tree decorates an inro which dates from the eighteenth or nineteenth century.  The design on this set of four cases and lid, 3" x 2-3/8" x 1-1/8", is in gold and silver togidashi on a black background.  The illusion of snow falling was accomplished by the use of large, irregular flakes of silver dust distributed unevenly over the entire surface. Inro were small, highly lacquered decorated medicine boxes which became popular among the samurai and merchants.

The Artist:       Koma Yasutada, a lesser figure in the Koma school of artisans.  36 

The Work:      "Classic grouping of Beauties... dating from the latter part of the 18th century, entitled Henjo, from the series, The Six Poetic Immortals.  A delicate flowering sakura [cherry tree] is overwhelmed in size, coloration and geometry in this very unique pot.... by our contemporary standards of proportion and aesthetic harmony."  Three masses of blossoms with a little foliage are seen on the tree placed in a squat, black wooden box with "cloud handles."

The Artist:      Chobunsai Eishi (1756-1829) was born into a high-ranking samurai family belonging to the Fujiwara clan.  In 1781 he received a position in the palace of the shogun Tokugawa Icharu, presumably within the department of keeping coloring materials.  He first studied painting under Kanō Eisen'in Michinobu (1737-1790).  Eishi turned to print design as a student of Torii Bunryūsai, with his earliest work dated 1785.  Four years later Eishi retired from service to the shogun and passed the leadership of the family on to his adopted son Tokitoyo.  Initially influenced by Kiyonaga, Eishi became a rival to Utamaro and established his own school.  He specialized in idealized portraits of beautiful women in an elegant and refined style, mainly in series, mostly in the theōban style, but also made a small number of pillar prints.  Active from 1785 until 1801, he also created a few illustrations for books including erotica.  He then only did paintings -- for which he is considered as one of the best artists with an enormous output.  He had but a small number of students, the better known ones being Eishō and Eiri. 37

The Work:      "Komachi, from the same series above, The Six Poetic Immortals.  In this instance we are now inside with a view out towards a traditional Japanese garden.  Observe the pre-Western perspective construction of the interior architecture so characteristic of the 18th Century prints.  While not the primary subject of the picture, a Prunus mume [flowering apricot] occupies space on a table outside contained by a soft ornamented oval, very likely, porcelain pot."  The flaring pot has cloud feet and is partly hidden on its right side behind a pillar.  The tree is more delicate than this type of dwarf is usually depicted.

The Artist:      Chobunsai Eishi  38