Mother and child: The music lesson

Utagawa Kunisada [歌川国貞] (1786-1864)

Item type:

print

Date of creation:

1845-1848

Height:

36.9 cm  (14 1/2 in.)

Width:

24.9 cm  (9 13/16 in.)

Technique / Medium:

color woodblock print

School:

Ukiyo-e [浮世絵]

Additional titles

Description

A mother plays the shamisen for her daughter. The mother is fingering the neck of the instrument with her left hand and using a bachi with her right hand. She and the daughter are dressed in heavy kimonos with kanzashi in their hair. Both are seated on the ground facing one another in front of a table that has the music on it with the characters are clearly visible. Only the back of the child is visible. The Buddhist goddess of music, Benzaiten (Sarasvatī), is shown playing a biwa in a circle inset in the upper right of the print. She is also using a bachi to pluck the strings of the biwa. The title of the series of woodblock prints appears next to the circle on a background of blue. The characters on the left-hand side of the picture are the name of the artist. The characters at the bottom are for the publisher, Fujioka-ya Keijiro.

Iconclass

42B7422
mother and daughter(s) (family group)
48C7211
musician training pupils, music-lesson

Instruments [MIMO Code] (notes)

Shamisen [3451]
Biwa [3325]

RIdIM images

Image URLs

image link 1

RIdIM record id

5472