Woman Entering Bath

Renowned as both a painter and a printmaker, Kitagawa Utamaro specialized in sensual images of beautiful women. This painting of a woman climbing into a bathtub illustrates Utamaro's ability to convey the erotic allure of the female form without resorting to overtly pornographic details. Another nearly identical version of this composition exists in the MOA Art Museum in Shizuoka Prefecture, Japan. Comparison of the two paintings suggests that the Oberlin scroll may be a copy of the MOA painting, or it may be that both are genuine products of Utamaro's workshop.