Court lady admiring plum blossoms

A shikishiban surimono of the late 1820s in the Art Institute of Chicago, this design depicts a court lady admiring plum blossoms — a classical motif that draws on the Heian-period association between aristocratic women and the early-spring plum (ume), the first flower of the lunar new year and a perennial subject of waka poetry. Surimono with court-lady subjects participated in the broader kokugaku-inflected interest in classical Japanese themes that was fashionable in early-nineteenth-century kyōka circles, and the prints typically pictured their court ladies in long-trailing junihitoe (twelve-layered robes) drawn from emaki-scroll convention. Shigenobu's handling here is delicate and assured: the figure occupies the lower part of the sheet with the plum branch reaching up to fill the upper register where the kyōka would have been inscribed. The Met holds a related but distinct design of the same subject dated 1830, suggesting that the courtly-plum theme was one Shigenobu returned to more than once.