Returned to lender The Met accepts temporary loans of art both for short-term exhibitions and for long-term display in its galleries.
Beauties as Shopkeepers Selling Prints, “Shopkeepers” (Shōnin), from the series An Up-to-Date Parody of the Four Classes (Imayō mitate shi-nō-kō-shō)
Utagawa Kunisada Japanese
Not on view
In this print shopkeepers, one of the four classes of Edo-period society, are represented by the employees of an enterprise that sells single-sheet prints and illustrated books. Kunisada, however, has replaced the expected contingent of male workers with fashionably dressed townswomen—leading viewers, past and present, to reflect on gender stereotypes—in an echo of the companion print showing a printmaker’s studio.
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