Young Woman Looking at a Pot of Pinks (c. 1767): Art, History and Details

Young Woman Looking at a Pot of Pinks (c. 1767) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Suzuki Harunobu (Japanese, 1724–1770).

The work and its context

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

A girl steps onto a veranda after a bath to look at a pot of pinks. A warm breeze stirs the poem-strip tied to the windbell above her. Irises bloom in the pool in the background. The print has been identified as the summer subject in a set of four flowers representing each season and is considered to be one of Harunobu’s most enchanting designs. One of the most celebrated and productive of all ukiyo-e artists, Harunobu is widely recognized as the first Japanese printmaker to create designs by printing each color in the image with a different block. These prints came to be known as nishiki-e, or brocade pictures, suggesting their resemblance to the gorgeous brocades worn at the time. The embossing on the waves in the stream and on the flowers was created by using unpigmented blocks during the printing process.

Object facts

• Title: Young Woman Looking at a Pot of Pinks
• Date: c. 1767
• Creator attribution: Suzuki Harunobu (Japanese, 1724–1770)
• Culture: Japan, Edo period (1615–1868)
• Type: Print
• Technique: color woodblock print, with embossing
• Dimensions: Sheet: 27 x 19.2 cm (10 5/8 x 7 9/16 in.)
• Collection: Japanese Art
• Department: Japanese Art
• Accession number: 1985.304

Collection credit

The Kelvin Smith Collection, given by Mrs. Kelvin Smith

Further reading listed by the museum

• Vignier, Charles, H. Inada, and Raymond Koechlin. Harunobu, Koriusaï, Shunsho: estampes japonaises tirées des collections de mm. Bing, Bouasse-Lebel, Bullier [etc.] ... et exposées au Musée des arts décoratifs en janvier 1910. Paris: Ateliers photo-mécaniques D.A. Longuet, 1910.
• Sotheby's London. Highly Important Japanese Prints, Illustrated Books and Drawings, from the Henri Vever Collection: Part I. March 26, 1974.
• Hillier, Jack Ronald. Japanese Prints & Drawings from the Vever Collection. London: Sotheby Parke Bernet, 1976.

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.