A Selection of Beauty from the Pleasure Quarters (Seiro bijin awase): Courtesans Hired for the New Years Holidays - Takigawa of the Ogiya

A Selection of Beauty from the Pleasure Quarters (Seiro bijin awase): Courtesans Hired for the New Years Holidays - Takigawa of the Ogiya, dated 1789 in the Art Institute of Chicago, situates the renowned oiran Takigawa of the Ogiya within the seasonal protocols of the Yoshiwara at the turn of the new year. The phrase hatsu-uri, the first sale of the new year, denoted a ceremonial appearance by leading courtesans that opened the Yoshiwara's calendar and was treated as a major event by print designers. Chōbunsai Eishi gives Takigawa the elevated treatment her standing demanded, presenting her in elongated Chobunsai school proportions with the long sustained contours and restrained palette that he established as his signature. His training under the Kano master Eisen'in Michinobu in the shogun's studio is visible in the careful spatial dignity of the staging, in the calm intervals of the design, and in the disciplined arrangement of patterned textile against quieter passages of ground. The series Seiro bijin awase, a comparison of beauties from the pleasure quarters, gave Eishi a framework to produce a sustained catalogue of named courtesans across multiple sheets, each identified by house and personal name in the cartouche. The Art Institute of Chicago records the impression's 1789 date and confirms its place in this important series, making the sheet useful for understanding how Eishi structured his named-courtesan portraits in his most productive late 1780s period of Edo bijin-ga.