歌川五雲亭貞秀画 『横浜商家異人之図』|French Woman and Girl, from the series Foreign Merchants in Yokohama (Yokohama shōka ijin no zu)
1st month, 1861
Medium
Woodblock print (nishiki-e); ink and color on paper
Dimensions
Image: 14 1/2 x 9 7/8 in. (36.8 x 25.1 cm)
Classification
Prints
Culture & Period
Japan · Edo period (1615–1868)
Department
Asian Art
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
Bequest of William S. Lieberman, 2005
Accession Number
2007.49.123
Tags
Art Historical Context
In the bustling port of Yokohama, freshly opened to foreign trade in 1859 after centuries of isolation, Utagawa Sadahide (Gountei Sadahide, 1807–1873) captured the exotic allure of Western visitors in his woodblock print *French Woman and Girl, the series Foreign Merchants in* (1861). As a master of the Utagawa school and ukiyo-e tradition—"pictures of the floating world"—ahide specialized in these "Yokohama-e" prints, blending meticulous detail with vibrant colors to depict ijin, or "strange foreigners," amid Japan's late Edo period (1615–1868). This nishiki-e, or "brocade picture," exemplif...
About the Artist
Utagawa (Gountei) Sadahide · 1807–1873
Utagawa Sadahide was born Hashimoto Kenjirō in 1807 in Fusa Province, in the area of modern Chiba Prefecture, Japan. In the 1820s he entered the studio of the enormously prolific and influential master Utagawa Kunisada, becoming one of Kunisada's most prominent pupils and adopting the studio name Sadahide along with the Utagawa school's celebrated lineage. By 1828 his name appeared on a monument l...