Man and Girl

Man and Girl is an oban-tate (vertical large-format) woodblock print by Kitagawa Tsukimaro, signed Kikumaro and dating to the early nineteenth century. The composition depicts a man and a young woman in close juxtaposition — a thematic register that places the print near the boundary of Tsukimaro's standard bijin-ga and the more anecdotal genre subjects he occasionally produced in the years immediately following Utamaro's death. The two figures, rendered in the attenuated three-quarter manner Tsukimaro inherited from his master, occupy the picture plane in a closely choreographed pairing that suggests a moment of conversation, departure, or assignation. The plain ground and restrained palette typify Tsukimaro's mature style, with attention focused on the figures' interaction rather than on incidental detail of setting. Single-sheet bijin-ga of this kind constituted the bulk of Tsukimaro's commercial output in the 1810s, alongside his surimono and book illustrations, and they form the body of work for which he is best remembered. The print is held by the Metropolitan Museum of Art.