The Courtesan Mitsuhana of the Ohishiya (Ohishiya uchi Mitsuhana), from the series "Evergreen Brocades of the Pleasure Quarters (Seiro tokiwa nishiki)"

Isoda Koryusai's The Courtesan Mitsuhana of the Ohishiya (Ohishiya uchi Mitsuhana), from the series Evergreen Brocades of the Pleasure Quarters (Seiro tokiwa nishiki), is dated 1771 in the Art Institute of Chicago's record (artwork 21302). The series title, with its reference to evergreen brocades, signals the same combination of named portraiture and textile catalogue that animates Hinagata Wakana, which Koryusai would expand into the dominant project of his career later in the decade. Mitsuhana, identified in the title cartouche as a courtesan of the Ohishiya, stands in full length against an unmodeled ground, her layered robes and heavy outer over-kimono filling the picture surface with patterned textile in keeping with Koryusai's mature Edo bijin-ga formula. The broad obi is tied prominently in front, and a tall arrangement of hairpins rises above a small-mouthed face. The pose is angled enough to display the collars and the obi knot, allowing the print to function simultaneously as a portrait of a specific named woman from a specific named house and as a record of the season's preferred patterns. The series Seiro tokiwa nishiki is one of several named-house catalogues that Koryusai produced in parallel during the early 1770s, each contributing to the larger documentary survey of the licensed quarter that the Art Institute's catalogue preserves through its named-house and named-courtesan identifications.