Snow
About This Series
Kitagawa Utamaro's "Snow" sheet belongs to the artist's mature application of the classical setsugekka triad, in which subjects are organized under the three canonical aspects of seasonal beauty in Japanese verse: snow, moon, and flowers. The grouping had a long history in Japanese poetic anthologies and had passed into the ukiyo-e tradition as a flexible framework for triadic and larger-set print projects, treated by many late Edo designers in both bijin-ga and landscape registers. Utamaro returned repeatedly across his career to projects working with one or more elements of the setsugekka conceit, and individual sheets cataloged under the simple title "Snow" represent his contributions to several distinct cycles in which the snowy element provided the seasonal occasion for a bijin-ga composition. The most celebrated of these treatments are the late large-format paintings on silk that Utamaro produced around 1802-1804, in which bijin gather outdoors in winter settings under heavy snow; in the print form, snow scenes appear in single-figure okubi-e portraits and in multi-figure interiors where the season is signalled by snow accumulating on rooftops or branches outside the room. The print is issued in oban tate-e format and depicts its figure or figures in Utamaro's mature bijin-ga manner, the long lines of robes and the patterns of winter costume carrying the principal expressive weight. Impressions of his snow subjects are catalogued among the Utamaro holdings of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, the British Museum, the Tokyo National Museum, and the Wadsworth Atheneum, and the snow theme figures regularly in the standard literature on the artist's seasonal bijin-ga.
Frequently Asked Questions
Kitagawa Utamaro's "Snow" sheet belongs to the artist's mature application of the classical setsugekka triad, in which subjects are organized under the three canonical aspects of seasonal beauty in Japanese verse: snow, moon, and flowers. The grouping had a long history in Japanese poetic anthologies and had passed into the ukiyo-e tradition as a flexible framework for triadic and larger-set print projects, treated by many late Edo designers in both bijin-ga and landscape registers. Utamaro returned repeatedly across his career to projects working with one or more elements of the setsugekka conceit, and individual sheets cataloged under the simple title "Snow" represent his contributions to several distinct cycles in which the snowy element provided the seasonal occasion for a bijin-ga composition. The most celebrated of these treatments are the late large-format paintings on silk that Utamaro produced around 1802-1804, in which bijin gather outdoors in winter settings under heavy snow; in the print form, snow scenes appear in single-figure okubi-e portraits and in multi-figure interiors where the season is signalled by snow accumulating on rooftops or branches outside the room. The print is issued in oban tate-e format and depicts its figure or figures in Utamaro's mature bijin-ga manner, the long lines of robes and the patterns of winter costume carrying the principal expressive weight. Impressions of his snow subjects are catalogued among the Utamaro holdings of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, the British Museum, the Tokyo National Museum, and the Wadsworth Atheneum, and the snow theme figures regularly in the standard literature on the artist's seasonal bijin-ga.
The Snow series contains 1 prints, created by Kitagawa Utamaro.
The Snow series was created by Kitagawa Utamaro (喜多川歌麿).
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