Young Woman Kneeling by a Stand with a Ceremonial Cap (from the series The Six Immortal Poets in Elegant Modern Dress)

Designed about 1790, this Chobunsai Eishi print belongs to his series The Six Immortal Poets in Elegant Modern Dress, in which the canonical rokkasen are mitate'd as contemporary Edo beauties. The sheet depicts a young woman kneeling beside a black-lacquer stand on which rests a ceremonial cap, an attribute that identifies the specific poet being parodied within the series. Eishi handles the subject as Edo bijin-ga refracted through classical reference. As a Kano-trained ukiyo-e master, he positions the figure with the measured calm of an academy painter, allowing the kneeling pose to read as dignified rather than decorative. The long lines of the kimono fall in evenly described parallel folds, and the lacquered stand and cap are drawn with the precision expected of his Kano training. The palette favors muted greys, soft indigos, and quiet ochres, with the black lacquer providing a strong but quiet anchor for the composition. The Cleveland Museum of Art preserves an impression as accession 1940.1046, where it is identified within The Six Immortal Poets in Elegant Modern Dress series. The print captures Eishi at the height of his strategy of dignifying ukiyo-e through classical literary allusion. By recasting a male court poet as a contemporary beauty kneeling beside a single identifying attribute, he both flatters the literary knowledge of his patrons and asserts that the Edo bijin-ga genre can carry the cultural weight previously reserved for hand-painted depictions of the rokkasen.