Picture Book: Camellia (Ehon Himetsubaki) 絵本女貞木

Nishikawa Sukenobu 西川祐信 Japanese

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This book features illustrations of exemplary women. According to the text in the upper section of these pages, a beautiful plum tree owned by a poor woman was to be transferred to the garden of Emperor Goichijō's palace by imperial order, but the emperor, moved by the lady's poem expressing sympathy for the warblers that would lose their nest, decided not to take the tree.

The brushwork of the plum tree reveals Sukenobu's training in the Kano idiom.

Picture Book: Camellia (Ehon Himetsubaki) 絵本女貞木, Nishikawa Sukenobu 西川祐信 (Japanese, 1671–1750), Bound book of monochrome woodblock prints; ink on paper, Japan

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