Women Buying Potted Plants from a Street Vendor, from the series Fashionable Brocades of the East (Fūzoku Azuma no nishiki)
Returned to lender
This work of art was on loan to the museum and has since been returned to its lender.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.
Artwork Details
- 鳥居清長画 「風俗東之錦」 植木福寿草売り
- Title: Women Buying Potted Plants from a Street Vendor, from the series Fashionable Brocades of the East (Fūzoku Azuma no nishiki)
- Artist: Torii Kiyonaga (Japanese, 1752–1815)
- Period: Edo period (1615–1868)
- Date: ca. 1784
- Culture: Japan
- Medium: Woodblock print (nishiki-e); ink and color on paper; vertical ōban
- Dimensions: Image: 15 7/16 × 9 11/16 in. (39.2 × 24.6 cm)
- Classification: Prints
- Credit Line: Lent by Lee E. Dirks
- Curatorial Department: Asian Art