Women on the Veranda Looking at a Girl Picking Flower

Date:: about 1790s
Medium:: Color woodblock print; long surimono
Format:: Oban
Source:: Art Institute of Chicago

Typical Price

Later reprint (Meiji–Taisho era publishers): $50–$400
Good later impression (Edo-period, worn blocks): $2,000–$8,000
Good early impression (vivid color, crisp key lines): $8,000–$30,000
Fine early impression (exceptional freshness and condition): $30,000–$60,000

Hokusai's bird-and-flower (kacho-e) prints are prized for their naturalistic observation and painterly sensitivity. Fine impressions from his horizontal oban series regularly appear at specialist Japanese print auctions.

Description

Women on a veranda watch from a comfortable distance while a girl below reaches for flowering plants — gathering blossoms or herbs in a domestic garden — in this long surimono from the 1790s. The elevated observers and the active young figure below create a layered composition of quiet attention, the watching women's stillness contrasting with the girl's reaching motion in a characteristic Hokusai study of gendered gesture.