A painting on silk in sumi ink and pigment by the Japanese artist Kawahara Keiga (1786 to 1862), dated 1822 to 1830, depicting the deity Inari as an elderly man carrying a yoke slung with rice stalks and walking with a staff, accompanied by a white fox. This personified, elderly-man iconography is one of Inari's several traditional forms alongside the more familiar fox alone, and situates the kami of rice, agriculture and prosperity as a wandering human figure rather than purely as the fox messengers who serve as intermediaries at Inari shrines. The painting is held by the National Museum of World Cultures (Wereldmuseum) in the Netherlands under accession number RV-360-4362, measuring 28.2 by 42 centimetres.
Facts
Subject Matter
Devotional FunctionKawahara Keiga worked mainly as a documentary and export artist attached to the Dutch trading post at Dejima, producing paintings of Japanese customs, flora and deities largely for a foreign, Dutch audience rather than for temple or domestic devotional use, so this image likely functioned as an explanatory record of Japanese religious iconography for its patrons rather than as an object of worship. 1 Physical Form
MediumKawahara Keiga, silk with sumi ink and pigment, 1822 to 1830, National Museum of World Cultures 1 Medium (class) Connections
Associated With
This source names Netherlands directly: "World Cultures (Wereldmuseum) in the Netherlands under accession number RV-360-4362, measuring 28.2 by 42 centimetres."
Source De Godheid Inari, Museum Record (National Museum of World Cultures)
Belongs to Tradition
Source De Godheid Inari, Museum Record (National Museum of World Cultures)
Depicts
Inari, Deities The painting's explicit named subject per its own Dutch title, portrayed in the elderly-man-with-fox form of the kami, in the holding museum's own catalogue record.
Source De Godheid Inari, Museum Record (National Museum of World Cultures)
Additional Source De Godheid Inari, File Record (Wikimedia Commons)
Sources
1. De Godheid Inari, Museum Record (National Museum of World Cultures)
National Museum of World Cultures (Wereldmuseum)catalogue record, medium/object-type descriptionQuote, catalogue record, medium/object-type description
A painting on silk in sumi ink and pigment by the Japanese artist Kawahara Keiga (1786 to 1862), dated 1822 to 1830, depicting the deity Inari as an elderly man carrying a yoke slung with rice stalks and walking with a staff, accompanied by a white fox.
De Godheid Inari, File Record (Wikimedia Commons)
Wikimedia CommonsDepicts: InariQuote, Depicts: Inari
De godheid Inari (oude man met een juk voor rijstaren loopt met stok, achter hem een witte vos), Kawahara Keiga, 1822-1830, RV-360-4362.
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