Hanaōgi of Ōgiya from the series Picture Puzzles (c. 1797): Art, History and Details

Hanaōgi of Ōgiya from the series Picture Puzzles (c. 1797) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Kitagawa Utamaro (Japanese, c. 1754–1806).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

In this tricky print, one must decode the small pictures in the rectangle at the upper left corner to learn the identity of the subject of the print: a woman whose name means "Flower Fan," her place of work called the "House of Fans," and what she is doing—emerging from a mosquito net.

Object facts

• Title: Hanaōgi of Ōgiya from the series Picture Puzzles
• Date: c. 1797
• Creator attribution: Kitagawa Utamaro (Japanese, c. 1754–1806)
• Culture: Japan, Edo period (1615–1868)
• Type: Print
• Technique: Color woodblock print; ink and color on paper
• Dimensions: Sheet: 37.6 x 25.4 cm (14 13/16 x 10 in.)
• Collection: Japanese Art
• Department: Japanese Art
• Accession number: 1985.359

Collection credit

The Kelvin Smith Collection, given by Mrs. Kelvin Smith

Further reading listed by the museum

• Sotheby's London. Highly Important Japanese Prints, Illustrated Books and Drawings, from the Henri Vever Collection: Part I. March 26, 1974.
• Sotheby's London. Highly Important Japanese Prints, Illustrated Books and Drawings, from the Henri Vever Collection: Part I. March 26, 1974.
• “Checklist of the Kelvin Smith Bequest.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 75, no. 7 (September 1988): 292–295.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.