Untitled

Kitagawa Utamaro

ca. 1793 · Woodblock print; ink and color on paper · Asian Art

Two women are playing with a baby. The mother, whose exposed breasts are accented with pink, gazes down at her son; meanwhile, he looks up her kimono. Through the diaphanous material we see both the child's head and the mother's leg. Utamaro accommodated the vertical format of the print by cropping the image at each side. Here, as in many other prints in this exhibition, the artist covers the woman's legs but emphasizes her naked breasts. "With their obvious sexuality designed to feed erotic fantasies, these images may have served as a substitute for shunga, or explicitly erotic prints, whose publication was illegal.

Artist

Kitagawa Utamaro

Date

ca. 1793

Medium

Woodblock print; ink and color on paper

Culture

Japan

Department

Asian Art

Credit line

H. O. Havemeyer Collection, Bequest of Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer, 1929