Mother and Child

Mother and daughter at play

A mother and daughter absorbed in playing house. In the mother's hands are toy versions of a stove and pot, a herb-gathering basket and a bowl; the doll on the daughter's back is a baby. The mother-and-child picture appeared in ukiyo-e at about the time the full-colour print was born, and Utamaro's work on the theme, made under the publishing restrictions of the Kansei reforms, is said to have established it as a subject in its own right.