Dutch Women Raising a Wineglass and Caring for a Child

This scene of a Dutch woman with her child and her maid is from a series titled Life Drawings of People of Foreign Nations; however, it was probably based on an earlier print from the Nagasaki School rather than on real-life observation. The original may have been the famous unsigned print Dutch Women attributed to Kawahara Keiga (1786–1866), which portrayed the wife and infant son of Jan Cock Blomhoff, a Dutch trading company head. Despite the Japanese government’s rule against traders’ wives living in Japan, Mrs. Blomhoff came to Nagasaki, only to be returned on the next available boat.

In Sadahide’s adaptation, the nurse, holding the son, is seated behind the standing woman. The woman, presumably Mrs. Blomhoff, holds a wine glass. This version is much more cheerful than the original in which Mrs. Blomhoff sits on a heavy settee, gloomily sipping her wine.