Courtesan with a Client Blowing a Horse of Smoke: A Picture Calendar for 1798, Year of the Horse

Artist Kubo Shunman (Japanese, 1757–1820)

MediumColor woodblock print

Dimensions4 15/16 × 6 13/16 inches (12.5 × 17.3 cm)

ClassificationsPrints

Credit LineGift of Joanna Haab Schoff, Class of 1955

Terms

Surimono
Color woodblock print
Horses
Smoke
Poetry
Men
Women
Calendars
Japanese

Object number2011.017.005

Label CopyThe formation of Joanna Haab Schoff’s collection of surimono, privately commissioned poetry prints, had its roots in the 1950s when she and her husband, James Stanley Schoff, then serving in the American military, lived in Japan. After returning to the United States, they collected Toulouse-Lautrec prints and were led by the Japanese influence on late nineteenth-century French art to seek out Japanese woodblock prints. The elegance and technical sophistication of surimono, along with the literary wit conveyed, especially appealed to Joanna. In 2006, the Johnson Museum organized an exhibition of the Schoffs’ collection, with an accompanying catalogue by Daniel McKee, Cornell Library curator of Japanese and Korean collections. In 2011 the Schoffs donated a portion of their collection to the Johnson Museum. ("American Sojourns and the Collecting of Japanese Art," curated by Ellen Avril and presented at the Johnson Museum June 25–December 18, 2016) • Tosozake no With spiced sake Sono kuchitori wa And a side dish Arinagara Beside him Kumo wo kasumi ni Clouds melt into the misty shape Suna hashiri uma Of a horse running through sand —Karaito no Yorifusa Oboroyo wa The hazy night Aki no tsukige ni Transformed into a roan Hikikaete Red like the autumn moon Tabako ni fukeru Blown with tobacco Kirihara no koma A colt in the foggy fields —Tangetsukan Hitoyo akete For one night, till dawn Kokoro no koma mo My heart like a colt Isamitsutsu Stirred up and lively Fukeru tabako no Riding in rings of Wanori wo zo suru Exhaled tobacco —[Shibanoya] Sanyodo Harukaze ni Blown by the spring wind Fukarete kuruu The runaway colt Hanaregoma Goes crazy Keburi no kusa mo Looking as though he’d chomped Hamu to koso mire On this grass of smoke —Mashiba no Yamakage This scene of a stylishly dressed gentleman with a distinctively individual face, blowing smoke from his tobacco pipe in the shape of a horse for the delight of his female companion, combines two popular legends concerning Taoist immortals. The first reference is to Cho-karo (Zhang Guolao), who was accompanied by a magical horse, which when not required could be folded into a wallet or kept in a gourd, according to different versions of his tale. The second is to Tekkai (Li Tieguai), who had the ability to blow his soul out of his mouth at will, allowing him to travel outside his body. The poems include punning references to horses, such as kuchitori, a horse’s bit, but also a small serving of food, and tsukige, referring to a horse with reddish hair, but also here to the moon of autumn (aki no tsuki), as well as obliquely to the reddish tobacco. These verses also replace tobacco smoke with natural “smoky” imagery: clouds, mist, and fog. The horse emerging from the smoke is drawn with the numerals for the small months of 1798—2, 3, 5, 8, 11, and 12.

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