Botanical garden

A botanical garden scene — depicting either the institutional gardens of a public establishment or a private garden of botanical variety — in Shuntei's characteristic mode of women and children in cultivated natural settings. The botanical garden (植物園, shokubutsu-en) was a Meiji-era institution combining Western scientific practice (the systematic collection and display of plant species) with the traditional Japanese appreciation for gardens as sites of cultivated natural beauty. Shuntei renders this modern garden context with his habitual attention to the interaction between human figures and the surrounding botanical display.