Young Woman after a Bath

Recorded by the Art Institute of Chicago as a hand-colored woodblock print in wide [hashira-e](/glossary/hashira-e) format and beni-e classification dated to around 1745, this image of a young woman after a bath belongs to the deshabille genre of [ukiyo-e](/glossary/ukiyo-e) [bijin-ga](/glossary/bijin-ga) in which the standard formal regalia of the courtesan is relaxed to suggest intimacy, vulnerability, or post-coital ease. The yu-agari, or post-bath beauty, became a recurring subject from the urushi-e era forward, and Ishikawa Toyonobu's treatment in the wide pillar format gives the genre one of its most elegant early statements. The woman, her hair still loose and her robes loosely fastened, occupies the narrow vertical field in a slightly turned three-quarter pose that allowed Toyonobu to display both the trailing line of her unbound hair and the gentle fall of her undergarments. Beni-e classification refers specifically to the application of safflower-derived pink pigment to the printed black outlines, a hand-coloring technique that supplies the rose hues of cheek and undergarment that read so warmly against the [sumi](/glossary/sumi) line. The wide hashira-e format, somewhat broader than the standard pillar print, gave Toyonobu enough lateral room to articulate the textile and bodily intimacy of the bathhouse aftermath. The Art Institute sheet is one of the foundational examples of the post-bath bijin in Western collections.