The Fourth Month (from the series Fashionable Monthly Visits to Temples in the Four Seasons)

Four figures walk together against a plain cream ground beneath overhanging bamboo leaves and a hanging shimenawa (twisted straw rope) with zigzag paper streamers: a bald elder in an orange-brown robe carrying a wrapped parcel on his back, a woman in a gray floral-patterned kimono with an obi tied at the front, and two younger women in dark hoods, one in a red floral kimono with a black-and-white striped sash and the other in a pale yellow-orange robe. The palette is muted — soft orange, gray, cream, and black-brown line work with touches of red pigment (partially oxidized to silver-black) marking a seal and characters at left. A vertical cartouche at upper right holds the series and print title in Japanese script above the artist's signature "Kiyonaga ga"; this print, "The Fourth Month" from Torii Kiyonaga's 1784 series *Fashionable Monthly Visits to Temples in the Four Seasons*, is a color woodblock print.