Back to back, from a series of 12 prints

Attributed to Furuyama Moroshige and dated to circa 1700, this horizontal o-[oban](/glossary/oban) sumizuri-e in the Art Institute of Chicago belongs to a series of twelve prints exploring the formal and erotic possibilities of figure groupings, with the present sheet arranging its protagonists in a back-to-back configuration that establishes a moment of intimate proximity without face-to-face contact. The twelve-print series format was a Hishikawa-school commercial template that allowed artists to develop sequential variations on a single thematic premise, a structure that anticipated the multi-print sets and series that would become a defining feature of mature [ukiyo-e](/glossary/ukiyo-e) production. Moroshige's pictorial vocabulary here recalls the late single-sheet prints of his teacher Hishikawa Moronobu, with the densely patterned kimono surfaces, the rhythmically modulated linework, and the panoramic horizontal arrangement of the figures across the broad o-oban sheet. Printed in single-block black ink on paper measuring 27.4 by 38.1 centimeters, the work belongs to the late seventeenth-century sumizuri-e idiom that preceded both the urushi-e lacquer technique and the multi-block color printing that later transformed the medium. The Art Institute of Chicago example contributes to documenting Moroshige's mature command of Hishikawa-school compositional templates during the closing years of the Genroku era.