Preparatory sketch: Receiving Heaven and One Hundred Rewards

Thanks to the similarity of the words, the visual combination of oak tree (bai in Chinese and haku in Japanese) and deer (lu in Chinese and roku in Japanese) conveyed wishes for a high salary (literally, ‘one hundred’). The theme had been popularised in Japan by Shen Nanping, a Chinese painter who lived and taught in Nagasaki during the 1730s.