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Accession no. FSC-GR-780.238
Title: Santai gafu 三体画譜
NIJL catalogue no. 241
Volume numbers: Complete in one volume
Contents/Foliation: Preface signed Shokusanjin 蜀山人 (Ōta Nanpo 太田南畝)
Seals and inscriptions: Owner's seal: Pulverer
Other: one unidentified vermillion seal
Additional colophon data: Colophon lists the names of all the artists who collaborated with Hokusai
Notes: Main title from daisen
The title slip, printed in light red, has faded almost completely.
Santai gafu 三体画譜
FSC-GR-780.238
Commentary by Ann Yonemura
Posted November 2014
By the time Hokusai reached his fifties, his reputation in the fields of print design, book illustration, and painting was well established. He attracted many pupils and followers, although he did not establish a formal studio. Santai gafu, published in 1816, was one of several edehon (painting manuals) designed by Hokusai and his pupils. These edehon presented techniques for a vast array of subjects and also elucidated features of Hokusai’s individualistic style, which was both adopted and adapted by his followers. The colophon acknowledges the assistance of four of those pupils: Hokkei, Hokusen, Bokusen, and Hokuun. Santai gafu built upon the success of the first volumes of Manga (random sketches), inviting comparisons among images of the same subject.
Santai gafu presents each subject in three images. A symbol shown beside each image represents each mode: square (shin), triangle (gyō), and circle (sō). In some groups, the contrasts are less apparent than in others, and some have a playful element in their compositions. The three modes occasionally appear to represent a distinction of viewpoint or form, but there is often a connection, however indirect or humorous, to the formal distinctions among calligraphic styles: standard, semicursive, and cursive. In calligraphy, these terms represent changes in form and style that are expressed as increasing simplification and fluidity of connected brushstrokes as well as reducing the number of individual brushstrokes and details, such as dots and lines. The visual comparisons and broadly expressed allusions to calligraphic styles must have enhanced the appeal of this volume for an audience that already had an appetite for Hokusai’s entertaining sketchbooks.
Selected reading:
Jack Hillier, The Art of Hokusai in Book Illustration (London: Sotheby Parke-Bernet Publications; Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980), pp. 142–43.
Toda Kenji, Descriptive Catalogue of Japanese and Chinese Illustrated Books in the Ryerson Library of the Art Institute of Chicago (1931; repr., Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago, 2005), p. 256.
Copies in other collections:
Art Institute of Chicago, Ryerson Collection
British Library, London
Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery Library NE1325.K3 A75 1816
Library of Congress, Washington, DC
Rijksmuseum voor Volkenkunde, Leiden (1353-67)