Sunrise, from the series "Fashionable Three Beginnings (Furyu mittsu no hajime)"

"Sunrise" is a second sheet from Isoda Koryusai's circa-1765 chuban series "Furyu mittsu no hajime" (Fashionable Three Beginnings), in which Koryusai built three bijin-ga around the three opening moments of New Year's Day, the new year, and the sunrise that marks them. Working as a Harunobu successor immediately after the 1765 introduction of nishiki-e (full-color woodblock prints), Koryusai treats the subject in the small-format, lyrical idiom that defined Edo ukiyo-e bijin-ga of the Meiwa era. The figures, of slim build and with the rounded faces of the Harunobu type, are arranged in a quiet domestic encounter at dawn, their hairstyles and casually wrapped robes signaling the special status of the first morning. Koryusai's reading of the auspicious sunrise theme is restrained rather than emphatic; instead of representing the sun directly, the season and time are evoked through small attributes, light pigments and the careful colouristic register that early nishiki-e collectors prized. The Art Institute of Chicago impression preserves the soft palette of salmon, olive and grey-blue characteristic of the first wave of multi-block colour printing in Edo. Within Koryusai's career the series is significant as one of his earliest sustained efforts in cycle-based bijin-ga, a strategy he would later develop into the much larger "Hinagata wakana no hatsu moyo" pattern book of Yoshiwara courtesans, the design programme on which his lasting reputation chiefly rests.