The Chinese General Guan Yu

Category

Library Item

Item no

18747

Title

The Chinese General Guan Yu

Artist / maker

Mochizuki, Gyokusen

Date

1855

Size

30.5 x 36.5cm

Type

Ink and colour; Mixed media

Location

Art and Design Library

Guan Yu (d. 220) was a general serving under the warlord Liu Bei during the Han dynasty. A fictionalized account of events from his lifetime, The Romance of the Three Kingdoms (Sanguo yan yi), provided the source for endless visual representations in China and Japan. Guan Yu is usually shown as a burly warrior holding a large halberd.

From the album Open Eyes and a Radiant Heart (Katsumoku roshin).

This album contains 106 works, alternating between calligraphy and painting, by a diverse range of artists, apparently working in Edo (modern-day Tokyo). The painting subjects are dominated by landscapes, birds and flowers, with a small number of figurative works. The calligraphy pieces are done in both Chinese characters and native Japanese kana, and are typically brushed on richly decorated papers. Many of the works date from the 1850s, but the last twenty or so pages of the album were left unfilled.
Information provided by Dr Rosina Buckland (National Museum of Scotland) and Dr Takahashi Toshiro (Daito Bunka University, Tokyo)

This album was donated to Edinburgh City Libraries by Marie Ferguson Dyer in honour of her father Henry Dyer. Dyer was a Scottish engineer who became the first Principal of the Imperial College of Engineering in Tokyo in 1872.

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