File:Painting, handscroll, shunga (BM 1980,0325,0.4 4).jpg

From Wikimedia Commons, the free media repository
Jump to navigation Jump to search

Original file ‎(1,600 × 904 pixels, file size: 196 KB, MIME type: image/jpeg)

Captions

Captions

Add a one-line explanation of what this file represents

Summary[edit]

painting, handscroll, shunga   (Wikidata search (Cirrus search) Wikidata query (SPARQL)  Create new Wikidata item based on this file)
Title
painting, handscroll, shunga
Description
English: Painting, handscroll. Shunga. Ten scenes of lovemaking. Ink, colour and mica on paper.
Date circa 1800
date QS:P571,+1800-00-00T00:00:00Z/9,P1480,Q5727902
Medium paper
Dimensions
Height: 27.90 centimetres
Width: 638.10 centimetres (Overall)
institution QS:P195,Q6373
Current location
Asia
Accession number
1980,0325,0.4
Notes

In two scenes a young woman lies dreaming after reading what we assume must be a letter from her lover. The dream ‘bubble’ leads into a scene of young lovers committing love-suicide (shinju-). Spreading a red blanket on a lonely moor and dressing their bodies in the white robes of death, the two prepare to meet their end. The young woman has already accepted their imminent fate and, eyes tightly shut, clasps her hands together in a Buddhist prayer to be reborn in Amida’s paradise (nenbutsu). They will draw their final breath locked together in one last intimate embrace, lamenting the cruel world that will not permit them to share their lives together.

Love-suicide plays were a sub-genre in kabuki and puppet theatre, and feature large in the work of Chikamatsu Monzaemon (1653–1725), Japan’s greatest playwright. Often the poetry leading up to their deaths suggests that the two bodies become one in sexual union. In the early eighteenth century these plays and the incidents on which they were based became wildly popular; so much so that the government banned love-suicide plays in 1722 and did not allow suicide lovers a proper burial in order to discourage the practice. Nevertheless, the popularity of this romantic genre of idealized and absolute love has continued into the modern era. A pupil of Katsukawa Shunsho- (d. 1792), Shun’ei was primarily a print artist who designed a large number of actor portraits. Not many paintings by him are known and even fewer shunga works in any medium. The only erotic book by Shun’ei currently recorded is Ominameshi (Maiden Flower, or Look at What these Men and Women are Doing) of 1789 (Clark et al 2013, cat. 131). Shun’ei’s paintings have an idiosyncratic personal style in terms of the manner of drawing the figures and their colour scheme. The eyelashes are painted especially luxuriously, giving a powerful sensuality, even a ghostly beauty, to the facial expressions. The sense of modelling in dark and light tones on the flesh colours of the bodies is also unique to Shun’ei and not found in paintings by other artists of the Katsukawa school. The scroll presently has ten scenes, but it is likely that it originally comprised the customary twelve and that two are now missing. [IA]
Source/Photographer https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/A_1980-0325-0-4
Permission
(Reusing this file)		 © The Trustees of the British Museum, released as CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
Other versions

Licensing[edit]

This image is in the public domain because it is a mere mechanical scan or photocopy of a public domain original, or – from the available evidence – is so similar to such a scan or photocopy that no copyright protection can be expected to arise. The original itself is in the public domain for the following reason:
Public domain

This work is in the public domain in its country of origin and other countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 70 years or fewer.

You must also include a United States public domain tag to indicate why this work is in the public domain in the United States. Note that a few countries have copyright terms longer than 70 years: Mexico has 100 years, Jamaica has 95 years, Colombia has 80 years, and Guatemala and Samoa have 75 years. This image may not be in the public domain in these countries, which moreover do not implement the rule of the shorter term. Honduras has a general copyright term of 75 years, but it does implement the rule of the shorter term. Copyright may extend on works created by French who died for France in World War II (more information), Russians who served in the Eastern Front of World War II (known as the Great Patriotic War in Russia) and posthumously rehabilitated victims of Soviet repressions (more information).

This file has been identified as being free of known restrictions under copyright law, including all related and neighboring rights.

This tag is designed for use where there may be a need to assert that any enhancements (eg brightness, contrast, colour-matching, sharpening) are in themselves insufficiently creative to generate a new copyright. It can be used where it is unknown whether any enhancements have been made, as well as when the enhancements are clear but insufficient. For known raw unenhanced scans you can use an appropriate {{PD-old}} tag instead. For usage, see Commons:When to use the PD-scan tag.

Note: This tag applies to scans and photocopies only. For photographs of public domain originals taken from afar, {{PD-Art}} may be applicable. See Commons:When to use the PD-Art tag.

File history

Click on a date/time to view the file as it appeared at that time.

Date/TimeThumbnailDimensionsUserComment
current20:05, 11 May 2020Thumbnail for version as of 20:05, 11 May 20201,600 × 904 (196 KB)Copyfraud (talk | contribs)British Museum public domain uploads (Copyfraud/BM) Eroticism in the British Museum 1800 image 5 of 10 #285/1,471

You cannot overwrite this file.

File usage on other wikis

The following other wikis use this file:

Metadata

This file contains additional information such as Exif metadata which may have been added by the digital camera, scanner, or software program used to create or digitize it. If the file has been modified from its original state, some details such as the timestamp may not fully reflect those of the original file. The timestamp is only as accurate as the clock in the camera, and it may be completely wrong.

Retrieved from "https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Painting,_handscroll,_shunga_(BM_1980,0325,0.4_4).jpg&oldid=752521202"