Viewing Maple Trees

Viewing Maple Trees is an 1830 woodblock print by Utagawa Kunisada that participates in the long ukiyo-e tradition of seasonal pleasure outings, in which Edo townspeople travel to a famous garden or hillside to admire the autumn colour. The seasonal calendar — cherry blossoms in spring, irises in summer, maples and chrysanthemums in autumn, snow in winter — structured both Edo social life and the visual rhythm of late Edo ukiyo-e, and bijin-ga associated with each season formed a substantial part of Kunisada's output. The composition gathers a group of women and possibly an attendant within a maple-coloured landscape, with the trees themselves treated as the principal pictorial event: leaves are rendered through overprinted reds, oranges and yellows that depend on the carver and printer's skill with fine line and bokashi gradation. The figures are drawn in Kunisada's late-1820s/early-1830s bijin manner, with long oval faces and the slightly elongated bodies that prefigure his fully mature style; costume patterns echo the maple foliage in carefully calibrated reds and golds. Because Kunisada was already the dominant yakusha-e designer of his generation, contemporary viewers would have read specific kabuki actresses into the bijin figures, and the print probably draws on a current performance even though its title presents itself as a pure genre image. The Art Institute of Chicago holds the impression, records the 1830 date, and situates the print within the commercial bijin-ga output of one of the most prolific designers of Edo ukiyo-e.