Nishikido of the Chojiya Green House.

Nishikido of the Chojiya Green House is another of Chobunsai Eishi's named-courtesan portraits, recorded on ukiyo-e.org through Art of Japan. The Chojiya was one of the leading Yoshiwara houses, and its oiran were repeatedly portrayed by the major designers of the late eighteenth century. Eishi's contribution to that group of portraits is distinctive. Where Utamaro pushed the half-length okubi-e toward sensual immediacy, Eishi worked in a more restrained direction, treating each named courtesan as a figure of ritualized elegance within an Edo bijin-ga that retained the academic disciplines of his earlier life as a painter. Apprenticed to Kano Eisen'in Michinobu and serving as a painter in attendance on the shogun Tokugawa Ieharu before he turned to commercial print designing in the 1780s, he absorbed contour discipline and balanced composition that he then redirected into nishiki-e. Nishikido's portrait deploys those qualities: tall slender figure, robes built from long calm contour lines, composed and aristocratic face, palette restrained around the most luxurious robe details. The sheet documents Nishikido's prominence at the Chojiya within Eishi's signature register. Authoritative cataloging detail, publisher, signature variant, censor seal, exact dating, and condition, resides with the original museum or dealer record represented in the Art of Japan entry on ukiyo-e.org and should be consulted directly. As an example of how Eishi's Kano-trained ukiyo-e produced courtesan portraits that distinguished themselves from his contemporaries' work, the sheet is a useful reference.