Miss Pomegranate

Mortimer Menpes

1901

Watercolor

Source: Japan, A Record in Colour, frontispiece

"Zakuro," the Japanese word for pomegranate, can be used a girl's name. It is an auspicious one: because of its many seeds, in Japan as elsewhere, the fruit is associated with fertility and continuing life. The season here is clearly springtime, a fitting background for this youthful figure. But the colour and shape of the lantern behind her suggest the promise of the fully grown fruit, and, by extension, the girl's own approaching maturity. — Jacqueline Banerjee

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