Warbler in a Plum Tree

This crisp, refreshing vignette of a bush warbler (uguisu) perched atop branches of blossoming plum celebrates the rejuvenation of the world in springtime. In the foreground, orchids are rendered in relaxed yet expert brushwork, with washes of pale blues complementing dark ink and modulated grays. The art historian Kyoko Kinoshita observed that this painting is “one of the masterpieces on silk by Gyokuran” and that her works in this medium often exhibit a refinement absent in some of her works on paper (see Felice Fischer and Kyoko Kinoshita, Ike Taiga and Tokuyama Gyokuran: Masters of the Brush, 2007, no. 106). The song of the bush warbler in the Japanese poetic tradition celebrates the coming of spring, and in a very similar composition on paper (ibid, no. 108), Gyokuran inscribed in her own elegant handwriting one her own poem (inspired from a poem in the Collection of Poems Ancient and Modern, Kokin wakashū, ca. 905) that explicates the setting:

Shirayuki no
kakareru eda ni
uguisu no
haru o shirite ya
hatsune nakuramu

Perched on a branch
covered with fresh snow
does the warbler
sing the year’s first song
when it senses spring?

The work is both signed and sealed with her art name, “Gyokuran.” As she was known to do, Gyokuran placed another of her seals, reading “Shōfū” 松風 in the middle of the composition as a visual accent. “Shōfū” can also be read “Matsukaze,” or “wind through the pines,” and relates to the artist’s given name, Matsu.

Tokuyama Gyokuran, one of the best-known woman artists of the Edo period, grew up in Kyoto, where her family owned a tea shop. Both her mother and grandmother were well-regarded poets. From them Gyokuran received instruction in both poetic composition and calligraphy. She studied painting under Yanagisawa Kien (1703‒1758) and later under her husband, the influential Nanga artist Ike Taiga (1723–1776). Gyokuran painted folding screens and sliding doors, handheld scrolls, hanging scrolls, and fan paintings. Gyokuran and her husband Taiga dedicated themselves to making art, living on little money, and sometimes collaborating on art pieces. She lived with Taiga in a small studio next to the Gion shrine in Kyoto.