Beauties in the Four Seasons

In spring, to keep birds away from the flowering cherries, a finely dressed housemaid is looping a cord of jingling bells to the branches. On a summer evening, a daughter in town is gazing at the faint light of fireflies. In the fall, face lit by a lantern, a melancholy sex worker is shown on her long night shift. A city girl holds her hood against the wintry wind blowing off a river, possibly Edo’s Sumida-gawa. Twentieth-century artist Chimaki here painted scenes from the recent and more distant feudal past.