Red and White Tale of Genji by Okumura Masanobu

Red and White Tale of Genji 1709

ink-on-paper

aged paper

toned paper

book

sketch book

japan

ink-on-paper

personal sketchbook

coloured pencil

sketchbook drawing

watercolour illustration

storyboard and sketchbook work

sketchbook art

watercolor

"Red and White Tale of Genji" is an illustrated book page from 1709 by the Japanese artist Okumura Masanobu, whose career spanned from 1686 to 1764. This woodblock print shows scenes from the classic Japanese novel "The Tale of Genji," a work that is considered to be one of the world's first novels. The print features the detailed and stylized figures and scenery that characterized Masanobu's work. It is now in the collection of the Minneapolis Institute of Art.

Comments

minneapolisinstituteofart about 1 year ago

⋮

By the early 1700s, when this printed version of The Tale of Genji was published, very few people could understand the complex written language in which the original tale had been written 700 years earlier. For this illustrated and modernized version of the tale, Okumura Masanobu wrote in a manner that reflected Japanese as it was spoken in the early 1700s. The text was rendered freely, placing emphasis on conveying the meaning rather than offering a verbatim presentation of the original tale.