Women Standing on Veranda by a River

This Art Institute of Chicago hashira-e of c. 1780–1800 places two women on a veranda overlooking a river — a stock setting in late-Edo bijin-ga that allowed designers to combine fashionable feminine figures with a hint of summer breeze and reflected light. The vertical format crops the architectural framework tightly: a slice of railing, a glimpse of water and far bank, and the two beauties stacked one behind the other in the foreground. Eishō handles the recession with care, scaling the rear figure slightly smaller and using the diagonal of the veranda's edge to lead the eye back through the design. The print exemplifies the unhurried, atmospheric register of his pillar-format work, distinct from the sharper okubi-e portraits with which his name is most associated.