Woman Walking in the Snow

Woman Walking in the Snow

Utagawa Hiroshige

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

In his prints, Hiroshige used the unprinted white paper to represent snow, a technique also exploited in this painting, in which unpainted silk, reserved against the pale ink wash, suggests the snow-covered areas. Slightly bleeding ink creates the impression of fluffy snow, and snowflakes were rendered with splashes of opaque white pigment. By contrast, the figure's partially revealed red undergarment intensifies the white. Hiroshige's early works, of the mid-to late 1820s, depict slouching, long-faced women, while his later works present tall beauties in landscape settings, as in this scroll, made in the 1840s or early 1850s.

Asian Art

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

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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.