The Actor Iwai Hanshiro IV in Street Attire (by Shun'ei) Conversing with Two Women (by Shuncho)

This collaborative aiban-format print in the Art Institute of Chicago, dated to about 1788, joins Shun'ei's hand with that of Katsukawa Shunchō, another pupil of Shunshō who later moved increasingly into bijin-ga (prints of beauties). Shun'ei contributed the figure of the actor Iwai Hanshirō IV, shown in informal street attire — a remarkable subject in itself, since most actor prints depicted performers in stage costume — while Shunchō provided the two female figures with whom Hanshirō is in conversation. The composition exemplifies a particular subgenre that emerged in the late 1780s, in which actors were depicted off-stage as celebrities of urban Edo life, and it also reflects the collaborative working habits of the Katsukawa studio. The aiban format, larger than hosoban, allowed the three figures to be arranged with breathing room, and the print preserves the texture of late-Tenmei-era Edo fashion: Hanshirō's understated kimono is rendered with restraint, while the women's hair arrangements and patterned garments showcase Shunchō's developing bijin idiom. The print remains a valuable document of both artists' early careers and the social world in which the actor portrait flourished.