Atago Hill at Shiba 1773 - 1793

Curator: Well, hello there. What do you see? The delicate pastels grab me right away—there’s such an airy sweetness to it all. It’s so easy, it's charming. Editor: This woodblock print, created sometime between 1773 and 1793 by Torii Kiyonaga, offers us a window into the Edo period. The title is "Atago Hill at Shiba," currently residing at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Beyond its charming sweetness, it gives space for conversations around class, leisure, and gender. Curator: Class and gender? Oh, come on. It’s just some women relaxing! I like how Kiyonaga-san places his figures. They don't try to compete with each other. They are just… there. Editor: Their arrangement, however understated, isn't random. Their composure and stylish clothes suggest an upper-class status, contrasting sharply with the laborious lives of most women during this time. It makes me consider those whose labor allowed these women leisure. Curator: Well, I think your theory is a little dark, isn’t it? Don't you feel that spring energy—this sense of endless, carefree afternoons? I just imagine it as pure lightness and ease. I wonder what it was like to work in woodblock—to embrace the kind of intentional limitation of mark-making, but still find so much expression? It's like a challenge that turns into a strength. Editor: It is also that exact reduction which underscores the ideal of feminine beauty from that period—that blank canvas becomes an active agent reinforcing cultural standards of beauty and what labor looks like along those same axes. It feels deceptively apolitical. Curator: I can appreciate that, even if it makes the viewing less light-hearted, it's just nice knowing these little pieces of our humanity, all linked together in these paintings—this feeling we feel here, those times over there. It seems hopeful that our worlds can speak so directly across the gaps. Editor: Precisely. By unpacking these layers, we gain a deeper understanding of the artwork itself, and of the lives intertwined with it. Art always holds a mirror up to society.