Two women gathering herbs

Two women gathering herbs, dated to the early 1830s, is a shikishiban surimono by Katsushika Taito II held by the Art Institute of Chicago. The composition shows two figures bent forward in a low landscape, gathering wakana—the young spring herbs traditionally picked on the seventh day of the first lunar month for the seven-herb porridge (nanakusa-gayu) that marked one of the gosekku, or annual festivals. Wakana-tsumi (herb gathering) was a long-established subject in classical Japanese poetry, reaching back to the Manyoshu, and surimono designers regularly returned to it for New Year and early-spring commissions because of its strong seasonal association. Taito II handles the two figures as a balanced pair, their robes patterned with the careful color and embossing of luxury surimono printing, and the surrounding ground rendered with restrained color to keep the figures dominant. The Art Institute's holdings of Taito II include several such seasonally specific surimono, allowing the artist's full range of bijin-ga themes to be traced across the surimono tradition.