Pink and Red Chrysanthemums

Kitagawa Utamaro's ukiyo-e print Pink and Red Chrysanthemums shifts his attention from Edo bijin-ga to the kacho or bird-and-flower genre, where the artist demonstrates his range as a designer working across the full thematic spectrum of late eighteenth-century ukiyo-e. The chrysanthemum, the flower of long life and the imperial autumn, occupied a central place in both elite painting and popular printmaking, and Utamaro illustrated it across luxurious bird-and-insect books such as the Picture Book of Selected Insects and in stand-alone prints. Here the flowers are massed in a balanced composition that allows the carver and printer to display the subtle gradations between pink and crimson that distinguish cultivated varieties. Utamaro's line is confident and analytical, defining each layered petal without losing the overall mass of the blossom, while the leaves are organized to give the pink and red flowers their visual platform. The result is a print that doubles as a decorative furnishing and as a quiet meditation on autumn pleasure, suited to display in a tokonoma or in an album of seasonal images. The Harvard Art Museums preserves this impression (object 207038), where it documents Utamaro's contribution to the bird-and-flower tradition alongside his more famous portrayals of women.