Detail of The Ameya by Robert Blum in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, January 2022

Title: The Ameya

Artist: Robert Frederick Blum (American, Cincinnati, Ohio 1857–1903 New York)

Date: by 1893

Culture: American

Medium: Oil on canvas

Dimensions: 25 1/16 x 31 1/16 in. (63.7 x 78.9 cm)

Credit Line: Gift of Estate of Alfred Corning Clark, 1904

Accession Number: 04.31

Blum went to Japan in 1890 to illustrate a series of articles for Scribner’s Magazine and spent eighteen months there working on his own projects. His illustrated three-part article on his experiences appeared in Scribner’s in 1893 and included an image titled "The Ameya," on which he based this painting. He wrote of an illustration of another ameya, or candy blower: “Very interesting things they do certainly perform . . . using the candy like a glassblower his lump of molten glass, and producing results, if hardly as beautiful or durable, certainly as artistic and finished as regards workmanship.”


Text from: www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/10186