Page 189 - Edo: Art in Japan, 1615–1868

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Nagasawa Rosetsu (1754-1799)
A Woman o/Ôhara Carrying Firewood
Hanging scroll; ink and color on silk
3
130.3X83.2 (5lV 4 X32 /4)
Shizuoka Prefectural Museum of Art
• Women from Ôhara, a small town
north of Kyoto, have brought bundles
of firewood to the old capital for
centuries. They wear strapped san-
188 dals, white leggings, broad white
pants under a kimono with a heavy
sash (obi), forearm covers, and a
white scarf. They use a hand-held
cord to balance the firewood on their
heads. The women of Óhara are often
included in famous views of Kyoto.
Nagasawa Rosetsu's painting of a
woman from Chara shows a reed mat
and other bundles tied on top of her
firewood, along with a decorative
branch of flaming red maple leaves. A
single red leaf flutters to the ground.
The woman, a robust but softly gentle
beauty, casts a sidelong glance at the
viewer. Rosetsu's late work, rendered
in the middle to late 17905 before his
purported murder in 1799, reveals a
deeply personal and eccentric inter-
pretation of his subject matter. Very
few pictures of beauties depict them
making eye contact with the viewer.
The features of this woman accord
with the type of beauty popular
in Kyoto in this era: elongated eyes,
straight nose, oval face, and small
lips deeply colored at the center.

Rosetsu's training under Maruyama
Okyo, founder of a naturalist school
of painters in Kyoto, is apparent in
techniques such as the washlike
treatment of firewood and the precise
handling of textile dyeing and weaving
patterns as well as in the three-
quarter stance, which displays the
mass of the figure. HG

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