Picture of a Salesroom in a Foreign Mercantile Firm in Yokohama

Object Details

• Artist

  Utagawa Sadahide 歌川貞秀 (1807-1873)

• Label

  A Chinese merchant, one among a large community of men in Yokohama who worked as compradors and money changers, looks on from the right as Japanese and Western merchants struggle to conduct transactions. Sign language supplements their limited knowledge of each others' native languages. At left, in the back room, an international group of servants prepares food, including meat and fowl. Scholar Julia Meech has suggested that two triptychs, this image and Picture of a Mercantile Establishment in Yokohama (see S1991.152a-c) were designed to form a single composition with this triptych below the other.

• Collection

  National Museum of Asian Art Collection

• Exhibition History

  Japan After Perry: Views of Yokohama and Meiji Japan (April 1 to May 30, 2003)

  Yokohama: Prints from Nineteenth-Century Japan (May 27 1990 to January 10, 1991)

• Origin

  Japan

• Credit Line

  Gift of Ambassador and Mrs. William Leonhart

• Type

  Print

• Restrictions and Rights

  Usage Conditions Apply

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  collections.si.edu

• Date

  1700s, 1710s, 1720s, 1770s, 1780s, 1790s, 1730s, 1740s, 1750s, 1760s, 1800s, 1810s, 1820s, 1830s, 1610s, 1650s, 1640s, 1630s, 1620s, 1690s, 1840s, 1680s, 1850s, 1860s, 1670s, 1660s

• Name

  Utagawa, Sadahide

• Place

  Japan

• Topic

  Tea, Foreigner, Art, Edo period, Japan, (1600 - 1868), Japanese Art, Ukiyo-e, Triptych, Washing, Business

• Culture

  Japanese

• Object Type

  Prints