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Long-tailed Blue Magpie on Flowering Plum Branch


白梅に尾長鳥
Utagawa Hiroshige I (Japanese, 1797–1858)
Publisher: Wakasaya Yoichi (Jakurindô) (Japanese)
Japanese
Edo period
early 1830s

Medium/Technique Woodblock print (nishiki-e); ink and color on paper
Dimensions Ôtanzaku; 38.3 x 17.2 cm (15 1/16 x 6 3/4 in.)
Credit Line William Sturgis Bigelow Collection
Accession Number11.21122
NOT ON VIEW
ClassificationsPrints

Catalogue Raisonné Mann, 60 Years (2021), #121; Ôta Mem. Mus., Hiroshige kachôga ten (1997), #4; RISD, Yomigaeru bi (1990), #80; Bogel et al, Hiroshige Birds & Flowers (1988), #16; Ukiyo-e shûka 14 (1981), Hiroshige list, p. 241, ôtanzaku #6.7; Ukiyo-e taikei 11 (1974), #10
DescriptionMFA impressions: 11.21122, 21.7918, 21.7919

Poem translated by Alfred H. Marks in Bogel, Goldman, and Marks, Hiroshige Birds and Flowers (1988); and in Mann, Sixty Years with Japanese Prints (2021), p. 315.
Signed Hiroshige hitsu
広重筆
InscriptionsLine from Chinese poem by Yang Weizhen (1296-1370): Ichiju dokusen tenka (no) haru
一樹独先天下春
ProvenanceBy 1911, purchased by William Sturgis Bigelow (b. 1850 - d. 1926), Boston [see note 1]; 1911, gift of Bigelow to the MFA. (Accession Date: August 3, 1911)

NOTES:
[1] Much of Bigelow's collection of Asian art was formed during his residence in Japan between 1882 and 1889, although he also made acquisitions in Europe and the United States. Bigelow deposited many of these objects at the MFA in 1890 before donating them to the Museum's collection at later dates.