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Your galleryThe Card Game
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Find the open card box at the lower left and the cards scattered across the floor, then the cranes and pine painted on the screen at the far right.
About 1790 Utagawa Toyokuni I spread this room in a wealthy Edo house across three sheets that join into one wide view. At the left, young players kneel around karuta, a card game still popular in Japan: a reader recites a line of poetry, and the players race to pick up the card of the poet who wrote it. The rest of the household moves among folding screens and lamps on stands.
Color woodblock print; ōban triptych · 37 × 74.3 cm · Art Institute of Chicago
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Details and source
- Museum title
- The Card Game
- Artist
- Utagawa Toyokuni I 初代 歌川 豊国 Japanese, 1769–1825
- Date
- c. 1790
- Medium
- Color woodblock print; ōban triptych
- Dimensions
- 37 × 74.3 cm (14 5/8 × 29 5/16 in.); Left sheet: 37 × 25.3 cm (14 5/8 × 10 in.); Center sheet: 37.1 × 25.2 cm (14 5/8 × 9 15/16 in.); Right sheet: 37 × 25.2 cm (14 5/8 × 9 15/16 in.); Mat: 57.2 × 95.3 cm (22 1/2 × 37 1/2 in.)
- Credit line
- Clarence Buckingham Collection
- Image license
- CC0 1.0 · Public domain
- Museum record
- Art Institute of Chicago
Galler’s rooms and hanging scale are imagined. The image is the museum’s original digital reproduction.