A Water Vendor (second state)

Suzuki Harunobu's A Water Vendor (second state), dated 1765 and held by the Art Institute of Chicago, depicts one of the itinerant workers whose presence animated the streets of eighteenth-century Edo. Water vendors carried sweetened or cool water through the city's hot summer districts, offering refreshment to passersby in exchange for a modest fee. By taking such a figure as his subject, Harunobu turned the commercial life of the city into material for his Edo bijin-ga and genre prints, treating the worker with the same attention to costume and gesture that he applied to courtesans and named beauties. The composition focuses on the vendor and the apparatus of the trade, with the carrying pole, vessels, and stylized indications of the goods organized around the central figure. The depiction of this work as a second state highlights the print's place within the careful refinement of designs in this period, when blocks were sometimes altered between editions to update color choices or correct details. Issued in the year of the celebrated nishiki-e revolution, the print belongs to the moment when Suzuki Harunobu's polychrome ukiyo-e woodblock printing achieved its mature form, and its color harmonies and registration reflect that technical breakthrough. The Art Institute of Chicago preserves this impression among its extensive Harunobu holdings, where it documents the artist's interest in the working life of the city and his ability to elevate humble street commerce into a refined urban portrait.