Returned to lender The Met accepts temporary loans of art both for short-term exhibitions and for long-term display in its galleries.
Women Buying Potted Plants from a Street Vendor, from the series Fashionable Brocades of the East (Fūzoku Azuma no nishiki)
Torii Kiyonaga Japanese
Not on view
Two women, one with a little boy on her back, examine the potted plants a street vendor has for sale. On offer are a potted plum bonsai and adonis flowers (fukujusō) in variously shaped pots, so we know the setting is the New Year. The lantern mount behind the vendor, decorated with paper and plant streamers, also signals the beginning of spring. This print belongs to a series of twenty designs depicting groups of people from various classes wearing elegant street clothes. Kiyonaga, in his trademark style, presents young women as impossibly tall and with highly stylized features, dressed in fashions of the day.
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