Forgetting Filial Piety

Torii Kiyonaga Japanese

Not on view

A rainy morning outside the licensed pleasure quarters further delays a disheveled young man who nonchalantly brushes his teeth while his companion and her maids look on with barely concealed impatience. The inscription, "Forget not your parents' love; respect the virtue of filial piety," is in satiric contrast to the scene, which in other circumstances might indeed reflect a family at its morning routine.

Torii Kiyonaga, the last influential artist of the Torii school, painted graceful, stylish figures in the late eighteenth century.

Forgetting Filial Piety, Torii Kiyonaga (Japanese, 1752–1815), Woodblock print; ink and color on paper, Japan

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