Lovers Beside Flowering Autumn Grasses 1680s

"Lovers Beside Flowering Autumn Grasses" is a black and white woodblock print by the renowned Japanese artist Hishikawa Moronobu, dating back to the 1680s. The print, now housed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, depicts a couple embracing amidst a lush landscape, with delicate details of flowering grasses and a distant mountain range. Moronobu was a pioneer of ukiyo-e ("pictures of the floating world") prints, a genre that focused on everyday life and popular culture. His works, characterized by simple linework and expressive faces, captured the spirit of Edo-period Japan and helped popularize woodblock printing as an art form.