Scoop-net (Sumida River)

Scoop-net (Sumida River) is a Kitagawa Utamaro design of about 1800 at the Harvard Art Museums. The Sumida River, the broad waterway that defined the northern edge of central Edo, was a constant subject of ukiyo-e through every generation of the genre, providing scenes of seasonal pleasure boating, fireworks, ferry crossings and fishing. Here Utamaro turns his attention to the small-scale fishery that operated along the river's banks: figures handle a scoop-net used to draw whitebait and other small fish from the current, the action of the net and the river surface integrated into a quiet riverside composition. The figures are rendered in the elongated proportions of his mature Edo bijin-ga, even when the subject sits outside the conventional beauty-print idiom. Patterned summer robes, gestures of arms and shoulders, and the open horizon of the Sumida combine to convey the heat and ease of a riverside afternoon. The print exemplifies how Utamaro extended ukiyo-e into observational scenes of Edo working life, treating fishermen and small tradesmen with the same care he gave to courtesans. As preserved at Harvard, the sheet contributes to a broader corpus of Sumida River subjects in ukiyo-e and shows the artist's interest in the social geography of his city.