1830
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
A Low Tide Pentaptych is a 1830 by Utagawa Kuniyoshi, a Romanticism work, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
Five small prints show women in long robes bending over shallow water, gathering shellfish at low tide. These aren’t ordinary prints—they’re *surimono*, fancy private commissions with poems on top. Ten poets wrote lines about the tide and abalone, turning a simple scene into a game of words and images. The poems were meant for friends, not the public. If you like this, look up *subject: japan, edo period (1615–1868)* to see more everyday scenes with hidden poetry.
Five surimono 刷物, privately commissioned prints known literally as "printed things," make up this image of women collecting sea life at low tide. Ten poems written by members of a poetry salon appear across the upper part of the composition. All but one contain the words "low tide," with the remaining poem describing abalone as a sought-after jewel.
A pentaptych is a composition of five parts.
Read the full account in the museum source.
Kuniyoshi grew up in old Tokyo when the city was still called Edo. His dad ran a silk shop, but Kuniyoshi loved anything with pictures—scrolls, screens, comic books. He talked his way into the Utagawa school, a kind of…
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