水野秀方(ひでかた)（本名：か弥）は、明治8年（1875）に本郷森川町の旧幕府御家人の家に生まれました。33年（1900）に水野年方に入門後、早くも35年（1902）に第12回日本絵画協会第7回日本美術院連合絵画共進会展に《美人》を出品し、一等褒状を受賞しました。また『少女世界』『女学世界』などの雑誌の挿絵や口絵を大正期まで手掛けています。先妻を病気で亡くした水野年方と38年（1905）に結婚した後は、家庭人となり大作を描くことは次第に少なくなっていきました。昭和19年（1944）に70歳で没しています。
　清方はじめ池田輝方や蕉園など、年方門下で多く取り組まれた風俗画を秀方も手掛け、本作では江戸時代の母子を描いています。

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The Road Back (Late Meiji (1938-1912))
pale color on silk; folding screen
140.2×139.0cm

Mizuno Hidekata (given name: Kaya) was born into the family of a low-ranking former retainer of the shogunate in Hongo Morikawa-chō in 1875. After starting her studies with Mizuno Toshikata in 1900, she showed Bijin (A Beauty) at the joint Japan Painting Association and Japan Art Institute Exhibition as early as 1902. The painting was awarded an honorable mention of the first rank. For the next ten years, she also worked on illustrations and frontispiece (kuchi-e) for Shōjo Sekai, Jogaku Sekai, and other magazines. In 1905, she married Mizuno Toshikata, who had lost his first wife to illness. With the household taking up her time, she gradually stopped painting major works. Hidekata died aged seventy in 1944.
Hidekata also painted the genre scenes that Ikeda Terukata, Shōen, Kiyokata, and other students of Toshikata produced. Here she has depicted a mother and child in the Edo period.