Courtesan in Front of New Year's Decoration of Pine and Bamboo

Courtesan in Front of New Year's Decoration of Pine and Bamboo, designed by Isoda Koryusai in 1770, takes as its subject the kadomatsu, the auspicious arrangement of pine, bamboo and (often) plum placed at house gates for the New Year. The courtesan stands or moves before such a decoration outside a Yoshiwara teahouse, her elaborate uchikake and high-set bin sidelocks marking her as an oiran of the licensed quarter, while the trimmed pine and split bamboo behind her invoke longevity, integrity and the seasonal renewal that the new year promises. Koryusai uses the meeting of two iconic Edo emblems — the high-ranking courtesan and the kadomatsu — to make a calendrical image that would have hung in collectors' interiors at New Year. The print belongs to the moment around 1770 when, following Suzuki Harunobu's death, Koryusai emerged as the leading designer of refined Edo bijin-ga. His command of the courtesan portrait, evident here in the courtesan's strong silhouette and the controlled patterning of her robes, foreshadows the great Hinagata Wakana no Hatsumoyo series of the late 1770s for the publisher Nishimuraya Yohachi, in which Yoshiwara women would be presented as named celebrities in seasonal fashion. The Art Institute of Chicago impression (object 36624) is a chuban colour woodblock in deep indigos, ochres and warm rose, the green-needled pine sprigs and golden bamboo treated with characteristic decorative restraint. The image is a quintessential Koryusai statement of the bond between calendrical custom, fashion and Yoshiwara celebrity at the start of the An'ei era. Source: Art Institute of Chicago, https://www.artic.edu/artworks/36624.