One of Utamaro's "Portraits of Beauties" in which the face and upper body of the subject are made to fill the whole frame, a characteristic of this master portrayer of beauty. This picture presents an everyday scene of a woman looking downwards as she cleans her pipe with a twist of paper, conveying an air of languid tedium. Attention is drawn to features such as the fingers and the line of vision, and the way in which these are used to express a state of mind is very typical of Utamaro's prints.