Currently not on view
Messenger Delivering a Letter (Fumitsukai byōbu-e 文使い屏風絵)
Anonymous
Japanese
Edo period, 1603–1868 | Kan'ei era, 1624–1644
y1964-50
This screen is a splendid example of early ukiyo-e painting, a style of Japanese genre painting that emerged in the Kan’ei era. Fern leaves are strung across the ceiling to celebrate the New Year. The exquisite lacquered vanity table at left indicates the setting—the private room of an expertly coiffed courtesan, who leans on an armrest with a tobacco pipe in her hand. Her maid, dressed in richly patterned robes, stretches across the tatami to offer a letter to a second, younger courtesan, whose hair falls into disarray around her shoulders. In the background, sliding doors are decorated in the pattern of "scattered fans and squares." The painted square on the panel at left depicts a scene from the Ukifune chapter of the great classic Tale of Genji (written in the early eleventh century). The interplay between the two courtesans, punctuated by the handmaiden delivering the letter, may be a reference to the pivotal moment of the Ukifune chapter, when the letter bearers of the two lovers of Ukifune cross paths by chance.
More About This Object
Information
Title
Messenger Delivering a Letter (Fumitsukai byōbu-e 文使い屏風絵)
Maker
Medium
Two-panel folding screen: ink, colors, and gold on paper
Dimensions
143.5 x 154.5 cm. (56 1/2 x 60 13/16 in.)
Credit Line
Museum purchase, gift of William R. McAlpin, Class of 1926
Object Number
y1964-50
Place Made
Asia, Japan
Description
Three courtesans reclining on the tatami mats. One at left leaning on her left arm, extends a letter toward a second who is sitting with her back toward the viewer, resting on her left and with her feet extended to the right. A larger figure in the middleground reclines on cushions; right arm resting on an armrest; left hand on raised knee; holding a long pipe. At left is a low piece of lacquered mirror stand. Sliding door panels (fusuma) in background. On the left panel, an applied scene, nearly square, of two figures in a boat that illustrates the “Ukifune” scene in the Tale of Genji. Several folding fans and two kidney shaped ones also on the door panels. Across the top of the room is the shimenawa標縄, a New Year’s decoration of a rope with suspended ferns, leaves, and paper strips used to cordon off consecrated areas or as a talisman against evil.
Painting mounted on later screen (19th century?) with interior and exterior surfaces stretched over two-fold frame that has a narrow border inlaid with a checkerboard of mother-of-pearl and black lacquer.
Painting mounted on later screen (19th century?) with interior and exterior surfaces stretched over two-fold frame that has a narrow border inlaid with a checkerboard of mother-of-pearl and black lacquer.
Culture
Period
Materials
- Patrick J. Kelleher, "College museum notes" Art journal 24, no. 1 (Autumn, 1964): p. 52-70., p. 52
- "Acquisitions of 1964", Record of the Art Museum, Princeton University 24, no. 1 (1965): p. 20-23., p. 22
- Allen Rosenbaum and Francis F. Jones, Selections from The Art Museum, Princeton University, (Princeton, NJ: The Art Museum, Princeton University, 1986), p. 32 (illus.)
- Princeton University Art Museum: Handbook of the Collection (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007), 24 (illus.)
- Princeton University Art Museum: Handbook of the Collections (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Art Museum, 2013), p. 298
