Picking Persimmons

Picking Persimmons, dated 1762 and held by the Art Institute of Chicago, takes one of the most quietly seasonal acts in Edo daily life - the autumn harvesting of persimmon fruit from a backyard tree - and gives it Suzuki Harunobu's particular flavor of poised intimacy. A young woman or a small group, dressed in autumnal kimono and rendered in Harunobu's signature elongated chuban bijin-ga proportions, reaches into the branches of a persimmon tree. The persimmon was a treasured Edo autumn fruit, prized both fresh and dried, and the image of picking it carried connotations of household provision, modest pleasure, and the steady cycle of the agricultural year. Suzuki Harunobu rarely needed an elaborate landscape to evoke a season; here, the leaves of the tree and the kimono pattern do most of the work, with the figure's lifted arms supplying the controlled diagonal that anchors the composition. The print was produced in 1762, three years before Harunobu helped initiate the full nishiki-e revolution of 1765, and so uses the limited benizuri-e palette of the moment. Even so, the discipline of keyblock and registration here demonstrates exactly the skills that Harunobu and his collaborators would later carry into polychromatic printing. The chuban format maintains the close, almost confidential scale that distinguishes his Edo ukiyo-e from theatrical or warrior prints. The Art Institute's impression preserves Suzuki Harunobu's deep affinity for ordinary actions - reaching, gathering, holding - performed with grace.