Courtesan Reading a Letter

This Art Institute of Chicago hand-colored woodblock print in toku-oban format and urushi-e classification dates to around 1745 and depicts one of Ishikawa Toyonobu's most enduring subjects: a Yoshiwara courtesan absorbed in reading a letter. The motif of the letter-reading bijin is among the great recurring images of ukiyo-e, charged with implied narrative about the absent lover whose words have arrived in paper form. Toyonobu's treatment foregrounds the textile choreography of the courtesan's many-layered robes, with the long unfurled paper of the letter providing a graphic counterweight to the heavy folds of cloth. Toku-oban indicates the larger oban format used for prestigious sheets, and urushi-e refers to the use of lustrous black lacquer-like accents combined with hand-applied beni pink and other pigments to enrich the printed line. The sheet sits at the chronological hinge between the urushi-e era that Toyonobu had inherited from his teacher Nishimura Shigenaga and the benizuri-e revolution he was about to help drive forward. As an Art Institute holding of a Toyonobu courtesan in classic toku-oban urushi-e form, the print is a foundational document for the study of mid-Edo bijin-ga in American collections.