The Courtesan Tamagawa of the Maruebiya House — 丸海老屋内玉川

The Courtesan Tamagawa of the Maruebiya House (Maruebiya-uchi Tamagawa) is a portrait of a named high-ranking courtesan of the Yoshiwara, the licensed pleasure quarter of Edo, working in the prestigious Maruebiya brothel. The sheet belongs to Keisai Eisen's series 8 Views of the Yoshiwara Pleasure Quarter, which adapts the classical 'eight views' formula - inherited from Chinese landscape painting and naturalised in Japan as the Eight Views of Omi - to the world of the Yoshiwara. In place of lakeside temples and autumn moons, the eight views become eight famous courtesans, each posed against an attribute that gestures at the original landscape category. Tamagawa is a particularly rich case because the name itself - 'Jewel River' - is one of the celebrated landscape names of classical poetry (the Six Tamagawa). Eisen builds the figure with the full panoply of late-Edo Yoshiwara bijin-ga: layered outer kimono, the obi tied in front to mark the courtesan's profession, and an elaborate aureole of combs and pins around the coiffure. The sheet is preserved in the ukiyo-e.org archive (Eisen Keisai, 8 Views of the Yoshiwara Pleasure Quarter, The Courtesan Tamagawa of the Maruebiya House). Impressions are held in collections including the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. The print exemplifies the way the most ambitious Edo ukiyo-e bijin-ga of the 1820s and 1830s worked simultaneously as portrait, advertisement and literary game.