Two Girls Under Plum Tree

Two Girls Under Plum Tree, a monochrome woodblock print in ink on paper held by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, is one of Sukenobu's spare single-sheet compositions of paired female figures in a seasonal setting. The plum tree — ume — is the standard signifier of early spring in the Japanese seasonal calendar, blooming before the cherry and marking the end of winter. Sukenobu uses it here as the structuring element of the composition: the two girls stand or kneel beneath its branches, their figures echoing one another in subtly differentiated postures. The Met's copy is preserved in good condition, with the line work characteristic of Sukenobu's mature ehon-era style: a fluent contour, almost no shading, and a confidence in leaving large areas of the paper untouched. The pairing of two female figures, often a young woman and a younger girl or attendant, is one of Sukenobu's signature configurations; it allowed him to suggest narrative — instruction, conversation, shared seasonal pleasure — within a single sheet without resorting to the theatrical excess of Edo kabuki imagery.