Two Women with a Baby who is Playing on the Floor

Two Women with a Baby who is Playing on the Floor

Kitagawa Utamaro

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Two women are playing with a baby. The mother, whose exposed breasts are accented with pink, gazes down at her son; meanwhile, he looks up her kimono. Through the diaphanous material we see both the child's head and the mother's leg. Utamaro accommodated the vertical format of the print by cropping the image at each side. Here, as in many other prints in this exhibition, the artist covers the woman's legs but emphasizes her naked breasts. "With their obvious sexuality designed to feed erotic fantasies, these images may have served as a substitute for shunga, or explicitly erotic prints, whose publication was illegal.

Asian Art

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Two Women with a Baby who is Playing on the FloorTwo Women with a Baby who is Playing on the FloorTwo Women with a Baby who is Playing on the FloorTwo Women with a Baby who is Playing on the FloorTwo Women with a Baby who is Playing on the Floor

The Met's collection of Asian art—more than 35,000 objects, ranging in date from the third millennium B.C. to the twenty-first century—is one of the largest and most comprehensive in the world. Each of the many civilizations of Asia is represented by outstanding works, providing an unrivaled experience of the artistic traditions of nearly half the world.