Komurasaki of the Kadotamaya, from the series Six Flowery Immortals of the Pleasure Quarters (Seiro bijin rokkasen)

Komurasaki of the Kadotamaya from the series Six Flowery Immortals of the Pleasure Quarters (Seiro bijin rokkasen) is held by the Art Institute of Chicago (101134_526501) and indexed through ukiyo-e.org. The series is a defining work of Chobunsai Eishi's Edo bijin-ga. The conceit pairs six contemporary Yoshiwara courtesans with the six classical poets known as the rokkasen, a mitate device that allows Eishi to bring Heian literary prestige into the floating world. The Kadotamaya was a leading house, and Komurasaki was among its top oiran. Eishi's portrait of her is built from the visual elements that distinguished his work from Utamaro's: a tall slender figure, robes constructed from long calm contour lines, a face composed and slightly remote, and a restrained color register that signals aristocratic dignity. These qualities are unmistakably the product of his Kano-trained ukiyo-e practice, the discipline he absorbed during apprenticeship under Kano Eisen'in Michinobu before he became a shogunal painter and then, in the 1780s, a designer of commercial nishiki-e. Komurasaki here stands in for one of the classical poets in the mitate scheme, allowing the viewer to read the image simultaneously as named courtesan portrait and as poetic homage. The Art Institute of Chicago record provides authoritative cataloging detail, publisher, sheet identification, and physical condition. The sheet is one of the clearest demonstrations of how Eishi's classical training underwrote a refined register within ukiyo-e.