Hanaōgi of Ōgiya from the series Picture Puzzles
1797
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
About the artist
1797
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
Hanaōgi of Ōgiya from the series Picture Puzzles is a 1797 by Kitagawa Utamaro, a Romanticism work, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
This print shows a woman in a soft pink robe standing by a window. She holds a fan and looks calm. Look closer: the tiny pictures in the top left corner spell out her name, her workplace, and what she’s doing. That’s Utamaro’s trick—games inside the art. This is an ukiyo-e print. See another one by Utamaro (Japanese, c. 1754–1806).
In this tricky print, one must decode the small pictures in the rectangle at the upper left corner to learn the identity of the subject of the print: a woman whose name means "Flower Fan," her place of work called the "House of Fans," and what she is doing—emerging from a mosquito net.
Read the full account in the museum source.
