Within an oval-shaped border, the figures of a mother and child are visible against the background of a fusuma sliding screen adorned with wisteria flowers. Helen Hyde gave the work the English title Baby Talk. Showing a baby trying to say something, the scene is both commonplace and, for the mother, precious. Hyde was an American printmaker who came to Japan in 1889. She studied Japanese painting and ukiyo-e prints, and the results of that study are discernible here in the gradation on the mother’s kimono and the gently curving lines that define the figures. On the other hand, it has been pointed out that Hyde’s view of everyday life was also likely influenced by Japonisme (growing interest in Japanese art) in the West and by the multicolored copperplate engravings of female American artist Mary Cassatt.
(MINAMISHIMA Ko)
Within an oval-shaped border, the figures of a mother and child are visible against the background of a fusuma sliding screen adorned with wisteria flowers. Helen Hyde gave the work the English title Baby Talk. Showing a baby trying to say something, the scene is both commonplace and, for the mother, precious. Hyde was an American printmaker who came to Japan in 1889. She studied Japanese painting and ukiyo-e prints, and the results of that study are discernible here in the gradation on the mother’s kimono and the gently curving lines that define the figures. On the other hand, it has been pointed out that Hyde’s view of everyday life was also likely influenced by Japonisme (growing interest in Japanese art) in the West and by the multicolored copperplate engravings of female American artist Mary Cassatt.
(MINAMISHIMA Ko)