Girl Drying Herself after Her Bath

Girl Drying Herself after Her Bath by Isoda Koryusai treats a private moment of grooming as a quiet study in form. A young woman, just emerged from her tub, towels her shoulders or hair while the long line of her body and the loose drapery of her robe register the contented relaxation of the post-bath moment. The Metropolitan Museum of Art preserves the impression that documents this design, dating it to around 1770, in the period when Koryusai was reshaping Edo bijin-ga in the wake of Suzuki Harunobu's death. Bathing scenes had a long history in ukiyo-e, but they ranged from frankly erotic to quietly domestic; Koryusai's handling here belongs to the second register. The setting is suggested by the simplest possible furniture, and the eye is drawn instead to the elongation of the figure and the careful description of cloth absorbing water. That attention to fabric anticipates the textile pyrotechnics of Koryusai's celebrated series Hinagata Wakana Hatsu Moyo, in which courtesans pose as living fashion plates for the latest patterns of the Yoshiwara houses. Even in undress, the figure in this print is described with the same precision Koryusai would lavish on the fully attired stars of that later project, and the work helps clarify the consistency of his observational method across genres.