Title:
Picture Bride
Creator/Contributor:
Sugimoto, Henry
Date:
c. 1965
Identifier:
92.97.108
Format:
painting
oil on canvas
New York, N.Y.
Inscription:
Signed in medium, bottom left corner: H. Sugimoto. Written on back, top center: Japanese American Immigration History in America
Series/Picture Bride
Description:
Stretched and framed. Image refers to the "picture bride" custom (see Historical Note for Sugimoto's "Stop Picture Bride"
(92.97.121), below). At midground left, an older mustached man in a brown suit and black hat, with his back to the viewer,
holds up a black and white picture of the woman who bows before him. The woman wears a blue kimono and yellow, red obi, geta
and a white bow in her hair. A suitcase and bag sit at her tabi covered feet. A grey suited man sticks his tongue out as he
stands beside them holding a sign, "Charlie's Picture Bride." In the foreground another western dressed older man in suit
and hat walks ahead of a younger woman in a kimono carrying her own luggage as a man leads them. The cobblestone street recedes
back to the left past a large multi-arched building marked "S.F. Ferry" into numerous buildings in the distance left. A tiny
horse drawn carriage approaches on it. The street also slopes right, down to the wharf where many picture brides disembarking
a docked ship, Tenyo Maru, wave photos at the men waiting below who wave their own photos. Other couples and workers walk
up the street toward the viewer. In the background two ships are visible in large body of water under two cloud-like images
floating above. In upper left corner, woman with hand to her head walks along path through rice fields away from Mt. Fuji.
In upper right corner, man in Japanese clothing waves goodbye to well-wishers as he leaves village with torii.
Subject:
Emigration and immigration
Japanese
Japan
Mt. Fuji
United States
Husbands
Ships
San Francisco, Calif.
Piers
Photographs
Suits
Kimono