2-727-865 - Heritage Art/Heritage Images

Elegant Pleasures of the Four Seasons, c. 1782. The title of this print suggests a series of four, but only this wintry print is known. A boy has dropped his toy wrestlers as he is hoisted up to a woman who has been enjoying a book at the heated table. Her companion buries her head beneath the blanket to stay warm, her bare feet exposed by a girl tending the hot coals in the pit in the floor. The two-fold screen in the corner of the room with a painting of a heron beneath a lotus bears the signature of Hanabusa Itcho (1652-1724).