Buying Potted Plants, from the series "A Brocade of Eastern Manners (Fuzoku Azuma no nishiki)"

Buying Potted Plants, from the series A Brocade of Eastern Manners (Fuzoku Azuma no nishiki), is a 1778 woodblock print by Torii Kiyonaga, the fourth-generation head of the Torii school and the leading Edo bijin-ga designer of his time. The series surveys the customs and pastimes of Edo women, and this print takes as its subject the popular street trade in flowering plants and miniature trees. Itinerant vendors moved through the city carrying their wares on shoulder poles, and the morning glory shows, peony markets, and pot-tree displays of Edo became fashionable occasions for women to step out, examine specimens, and choose new plants for their courtyards or interior corners. Kiyonaga depicts one or more elegant women in conversation with a vendor over a selection of potted plants, the small horticultural drama serving as a frame for the display of contemporary kimono and the choreography of urban shopping. The composition exhibits his mature canon of figure - tall, gracefully proportioned, and arranged with calm spacing - and uses the small, attentive gestures of inspection (a hand raised to a leaf, a glance into a pot) to animate the scene. His Torii school training in confident contour drawing gives the print its decisive line. The print is preserved at the Art Institute of Chicago, where it sits among the museum's Fuzoku Azuma no nishiki impressions. It illustrates how Edo bijin-ga absorbed the seasonal commerce of the city into its repertoire of subjects.