Description
In Young Man Carrying a Girl on His Back, Katsukawa Shunshō joins two pale-robed figures within a very narrow composition. The girl rides high on the man’s back, making their bodies a single vertical group, while a tree rises behind them. The close format concentrates attention on the act of carrying and the balance through which one person supports another.
Made in the late eighteenth century, the work is an ink-and-color woodblock print. The act of carrying gives the image a sense of movement and dependence, allowing a simple physical arrangement to suggest care, effort or companionship without fixing one story as certain. Shunshō preserves the encounter in a lasting form. Its interest lies in the connection between the two people, where one figure’s position is sustained directly by the other.
Read our guide to giclée prints or browse the Katsukawa Shunshō collection.
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