Young Lovers Preparing Tea

Held in the Victoria and Albert Museum and assigned to 1770, this print by Katsukawa Shunsho departs from his usual yakusha-e specialty to present a bijin-ga subject: young lovers preparing tea. Although Shunsho is best known as the founder of the Katsukawa school and the great reformer of Edo ukiyo-e actor portraiture, he also produced refined images of women, often shown in the everyday domestic settings that were a staple of the bijin-ga genre. Here a couple — a young woman and her companion — busy themselves with the implements of tea: a kettle, brazier, water jar, and bowls suggested by the print's quiet still-life elements. Shunsho composes the figures in a tight grouping, their robes overlapping in a way that hints at intimacy without explicit eroticism. The scene draws on the same observational acuity that made his actor prints effective; faces and postures are individualized rather than generalized. The color palette is muted, characteristic of early-1770s benizuri or limited-color prints that preceded full nishiki-e standardization in some workshops. By exploring contemporary romantic subjects within the Katsukawa school's idiom, Shunsho demonstrated the range that made him a benchmark figure of Edo ukiyo-e, and helped lay the groundwork for the more elaborate bijin-ga that students such as Shunko and Shuncho would develop later in the decade.