The Courtesan Hanaogi of the Ogiya, with Child Attendants Yoshino and Tatsuta

The Courtesan Hanaogi of the Ogiya, with Child Attendants Yoshino and Tatsuta, dated 1788 in the Art Institute of Chicago, is among Chōbunsai Eishi's portraits of one of the most celebrated oiran of late eighteenth-century Edo. Hanaogi of the Ogiya was famous not only for her beauty but also for her cultivation: she composed kyōka, played music, and was the subject of competing print campaigns by leading designers. Eishi gives her the formal staging her standing required, presenting her at full height with her young attendants Yoshino and Tatsuta arranged in supporting positions that emphasize her primacy. The print is a paradigm of Chobunsai school Edo bijin-ga: the proportions are elongated, the contour lines are long and unbroken, the palette is restrained, and the patterned textiles do the work of marking rank and identity. Eishi's training in the Kano studio of Eisen'in Michinobu, before he shifted to ukiyo-e, lends the composition a spatial composure that distinguishes his treatment from more theatrical designers of the same moment. The named identifications in the cartouche position the sheet as both portrait and Yoshiwara catalogue, allowing connoisseurs to match face to celebrity. The Art Institute of Chicago records the impression's 1788 date and confirms the identification of all three figures, making it an important document of Hanaogi's prominence and of Eishi's stature as a print designer at the height of his late 1780s output.