A Woman Kneeling

This monochrome woodblock print in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, executed in ink only without overprinted color, shows a single woman in a kneeling pose. The unusual medium — sumizuri-e (ink-only printing) at a date when polychrome nishiki-e dominated the market — suggests either a preparatory key-block proof of a design that was ultimately published in color, an artist's variant, or an example produced for a specialized audience or purpose. The Met's record dates the print to the 1790s, consistent with Eishō's active years. The figure is rendered with the elongated oval face, narrow eyes, and slender neck of his mature style, the kneeling pose allowing the long sweep of kimono to fill the lower half of the composition with patterned cloth that, in a polychrome impression, would have carried color.