Woman and Small Boy
Katsukawa Shunchō Japanese
Edo period (1615–1868)
Not on view
In this print the artist employs seasonal clues to suggest the summer setting. Mother and child are engaged in a leisure summertime activity, a luxury they can enjoy as members of the merchant class (chōnin). The child points to a cicada (a summer insect) on a tree branch, and his mother shows interest in her son's discovery. Each holds an accessory common in summer: he a parasol, she a fan.
Shunchō often used the format of hashira-e, or pillar print—a narrow, vertical composition. Here, following the Japanese convention in which images are cropped to conform to the print's dimensions, he truncated the parasol, the mother's left arm, and part of her hair. With particular skill he rendered just enough of the tree to let the viewer know where the child's attention is focused.
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