
Two Women with Drum
- Date:
- 18th century
- Medium:
- Color woodblock print; chuban
- Source:
- Art Institute of Chicago
Description
This chuban color woodblock print by Suzuki Harunobu, titled *Two Women with Drum*, shows two figures reclining closely together on green tatami matting, limbs and patterned robes intertwined in a close embrace — one wears a floral pink-and-white kimono, the other a dark grey-and-green striped robe with a black sash, hair dressed in topknots. A small hand-drum (tsuzumi) rests on the mat beside them, while a caged bird on a stand, a paper shoji screen, and a wooden post furnish the room behind, with a glimpse of a potted plant on an open veranda at right. The palette is soft and muted — salmon pink, sage green, pale grey, and black — giving the intimate interior scene a quiet, hushed mood.
Flag (not part of the description above): the supplied year, 1701, predates Harunobu's birth (c. 1725) and death (1770) — he wasn't alive to make a print that year. This looks like a metadata error rather than a usable fact; you may want to route this slug to the stage-4 contradiction queue rather than persist "1701" into the catalog record.
More Prints by Suzuki Harunobu

Two Women Washing Their Hair
c. 1767/68
Color woodblock print; chuban

Parody of Kawachi-goe from "Tales of Ise"
1765
Color woodblock print; right sheet of chuban diptych (left sheet: 1925.2025)

Young Man Holding Umbrella Beside a Fence
c. 1767/68
Color woodblock print; chuban

Going to the Theater
c. 1770/71
Color woodblock print; chuban
Frequently Asked Questions
Two Women with Drum was created by Suzuki Harunobu (鈴木春信) in 18th century.