『横浜異 人商館座敷之図』|Drawing Room of a Foreign Business Establishment in Yokohama
9th month, 1861
Medium
Center and right sheets of a triptych of woodblock prints; ink and color on paper
Dimensions
Image: 13 7/8 × 18 1/4 in. (35.2 × 46.4 cm) Mat: 18 3/4 × 23 1/4 in. (47.6 × 59.1 cm)
Classification
Prints
Culture & Period
Japan · Edo period (1615–1868)
Department
Asian Art
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
Gift of Lincoln Kirstein, 1959
Accession Number
JP3179
Tags
Art Historical Context
This striking woodblock print by Utagawa Sadahide offers a vivid glimpse into Yokohama’s bustling treaty port just seven years after Japan reopened to Western trade. Created in the ninth month of 1861, during the final years of the Edo period, the work depicts the drawing room of a foreign business establishment, where Japanese attendants serve Western visitors amid a lively social scene. The tags hint at the details: elegantly dressed men and women gather around tables laden with food, while musical instruments suggest a moment of cultural exchange and curiosity. Sadahide, a master of the Ut...
About the Artist
Utagawa (Gountei) Sadahide · 1807–1873
Utagawa Sadahide was born Hashimoto Kenjirō in 1807 in Fusa Province, in the area of modern Chiba Prefecture, Japan. In the 1820s he entered the studio of the enormously prolific and influential master Utagawa Kunisada, becoming one of Kunisada's most prominent pupils and adopting the studio name Sadahide along with the Utagawa school's celebrated lineage. By 1828 his name appeared on a monument l...