Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849), Standing courtesan, Edo period, early 19th century |　葛飾北斎　立美人図　江戸時代後期　19世紀初頭

Edmond de Goncourt (1822-1896).

Christie's, New York, Japanese and Korean Art, 22 September 2004, lot 138.

Hokusai ten [Hokusai], Tokyo National Museum, Tokyo, 2005, cat. no. 194.

Edmond de Goncourt, Hokusai, Paris, 1896, pp. 237-38.

This graceful portrait of a courtesan was formerly in the collection Edmond de Goncourt (1823-1896), a French writer, critic and art historian. Writing numerous books in collaboration with his brother, Jules de Goncourt (1830-1870), both published scholarship and important criticism on Japanese and European art. Throughout the 1860s, the brothers wrote extensively on Japan and were among the earliest art critics to express a fascination with the archipelago. Goncourt published the first monograph on Kitagawa Utamaro (1854-1906) in 1891, and later Hokusai in 1896

The figure has been rendered primarily in delicate strokes of ink, with subtle highlights of gofun (shell-white pigment) and red. Her outer robe is decorated with motifs of cranes in flight above pine. Her large obi sash tied to the front is embroidered with roundels of further cranes.

The inscription appearing at the top quotes the Rinzai Zen monk Takuan Soho (1573–1645), and has been translated as it appears in Goncourt's monograph in Matthi Forrer, Hokusai (New York, 1988), p. 377:

Buddha exploited religious law. The first priests of his posterity continue to exploit their former master, and you exploit your body. Your commerce consists in calming the fever born of passion. In truth, reality is simply the void, and the void is reality. Leaves offer their greenness and flowers their color.

Hotoke wa ho o uri, soshi wa hotoke o uri

natsuse no so wa soshi o uru

nanji wa goshaku no karada o uri, issai shujo no honno o yasumusu

shikisoku zeku, kusoku zeshiki

yanagi wa midori, hana wa beni no iroiro ka

The following lines were added by the haiku poet Meijiro Sanjin:

Even though the moon

drifts across the pond

night after night,

it neither lingers

nor leaves a trace of its reflection

Ike no tsura ni

yonayona tsuki wa

kayoedomo

kokoro mo todomasu

kage mo nokosazu

來源

德蒙·德·龔古爾收藏

紐約佳士得2004年9月22日，編號138

展覽

《北斎展》，東京國立博物館，東京，2005年，編號194

此段題跋由馬蒂·福雷爾（Matthi Forrer）譯成英文，發表於《Hokusai》，紐約，1988年，頁377，此處中文係由英文轉譯：

佛賣法，祖賣佛

末世僧賣祖

汝賣五尺身，平息眾生慾火

色即是空，空即是色

柳綠花紅，池面夜夜月輪經天，

其心無滯，其影不留。