Fond of Things from the series Eight Views of Favorite Things of Today's World

Fond of Things, from the series Eight Views of Favorite Things of Today's World, is a color woodblock print designed by Kitagawa Utamaro around 1797 and held in the Cleveland Museum of Art. The series transposes the classical theme of the Eight Views, traditionally associated with idealized Chinese landscapes, into a survey of contemporary urban tastes in Edo. In place of mist over the Xiao and Xiang rivers, Utamaro depicts the small enthusiasms of fashionable women: a passion for textiles, a favored toy, a treasured object. This particular sheet zooms in on the gesture and expression of a beauty whose attention is fixed on the thing she favors, turning consumption itself into a subject worthy of elegant treatment. The conceit fit a moment when Edo bijin-ga increasingly recorded the rituals of a sophisticated commoner culture, with ukiyo-e prints functioning as both mirrors and advertisements of urban style. Utamaro's drawing emphasizes the relationship between hand and object, and his color woodblocks balance bold patterned silks against simpler grounds so the eye returns to the figure's face. For students of Kitagawa Utamaro's printmaking, the series offers a useful counterpoint to his courtesan portraits: rather than naming a famous woman of the Yoshiwara, it celebrates the type of an unnamed, discerning Edo beauty whose pleasure in things stands in for the broader connoisseurship of her world.