This print of Kitagawa Utamaro’s Mother and Child depicts Japanese folk hero Kintarō and his mother. Kintarõ’s mother appears unbothered as he squishes her face between his chubby toddler hands. She smokes with one hand, tightly holding onto him with the other. The color of her lips matches his own complexion, showing the union of mother and child, contrasted by her seemingly aloof attitude.
The original of this image was a woodblock print first created around the 1790’s. Utamaro was a prominent woodblock print artist and is known for his bijin okubi-e or “large-headed pictures of beautiful women” as well as his Mother and Child series which this print comes from. His art was extremely influential on Japanese art and culture at the time.
