Two Courtesans

Held by the Art Institute of Chicago and dated broadly to the eighteenth century, this color woodblock print depicts a pair of Yoshiwara courtesans in characteristic Koryusai bijin-ga style. The double-figure composition was a recurring device in the An'ei period, allowing Koryusai to play one woman's posture, height, and patterned robe against the other and to construct a pictorial dialogue of fashion and rank. The print likely belongs to the period of Koryusai's first major Yoshiwara series, when he was developing the formal vocabulary that would culminate in the celebrated Hinagata Wakana no Hatsumoyo ranking series of large-format courtesan portraits. The slender, elongated figures, the careful balancing of textile patterns, and the restraint of the background register all reflect Koryusai's debt to Harunobu, while the more confident handling of fabric weight and the firmer outline of the faces foreshadow the heavier-bodied bijin style that he would refine through the mid-1770s and that would in turn influence Kiyonaga and Utamaro.