Kitagawa Utamaro is remembered for elegant portraits of women, the beauties of Edo's pleasure quarter. But his career began with insects. In 1788 the publisher Tsutaya Jūzaburō, one of the most daring editors of the age, brought out Utamaro's Picture Book of Crawling Creatures, and a page from it is this print: a red dragonfly hovering over bellflowers and pinks while a locust clings to a stem above.
The book is a lovely collaboration. Each page paired a picture with a comic poem, called kyōka, written by members of a poetry circle. The poems play with words and puns, and the pictures answer them with a sharp, affectionate eye. Utamaro was not just decorating. He observed. The veins in the wings, the arch of the dragonfly's body and the soft petals are all caught with a naturalist's accuracy and a poet's sense of space.
The printing was sophisticated for its time. Delicate gradations of color, sometimes with the surface embossed or patterned, gave the plates a richness that few books of the period could match. It was the kind of book collectors in Edo prized.
It also tells us how Utamaro learned to see. After this book, Tsutaya published his series of bird and shell books, and the two men became close collaborators. Utamaro's later fame in the 1790s came from his large-format portraits of women, but you can feel the same patient looking in both.
The page is quiet, and a little funny. A tiny insect on a flower is given the dignity of a portrait.
Utamaro's Red Dragonfly and Locust appears on our: