Fashionable Beauties in a Chrysanthemum Garden (Furyu bijin kikubatake)

This Art Institute of Chicago print, dated c. 1810 and identified as the right sheet of an oban triptych, depicts "Fashionable Beauties in a Chrysanthemum Garden (Furyu bijin kikubatake)" — an autumnal scene of women among cultivated chrysanthemums. Chrysanthemum culture had been an elite pastime in Edo since the late seventeenth century, and by the early nineteenth century kikubatake (chrysanthemum gardens) at sites like Sugamo and Somei drew enormous public crowds during the autumn viewing season. Eizan's subject also carries a private resonance: kiku (chrysanthemum) is the first character of his own studio name, Kikukawa, and his prints frequently use the flower as a visual signature. Surviving as a single sheet from a triptych, this image preserves only one section of what was originally a wider garden composition, but it shows characteristic Kikukawa-school finishing — densely patterned robes, restrained gestures, and the slightly elongated head and neck that define Eizan's post-Utamaro bijin type.