Ohan and Choemon, from the series "Fashonable Patterns in Utamaro Style (Ryuko moyo Utamaro-gata)"

Ohan and Chōemon, from the series Fashionable Patterns in Utamaro Style (Ryūkō moyō Utamaro-gata), is a color woodblock print of about 1793 by Kitagawa Utamaro held by the Art Institute of Chicago. The series capitalized on the artist's name as a brand, framing patterned designs and pairings of celebrated lovers under the banner of his own house style. Ohan and Chōemon were familiar to Edo audiences from the play Katsuragawa Renri no Shigarami and other adaptations: a young woman from a respectable household and an older merchant whose love affair leads to scandal and tragic resolution. In Utamaro's design, the pair is presented in a half-length, close-up format characteristic of his Edo bijin-ga, with Ohan's youthful features and elegantly dressed hair contrasted with the more sober bearing of Chōemon beside her. The patterned kimono are an important part of the design's appeal, treated almost as samples of fashionable taste that buyers could imagine adapting in their own dress. The result is a print that operates on multiple levels at once: as a portrait of theatrical lovers, as a fashion plate, and as an explicit branding of bijin-ga as the artist's own signature mode of ukiyo-e. As an example of late eighteenth-century Edo print culture, the Art Institute of Chicago's impression shows how thoroughly Kitagawa Utamaro's style had become a recognizable category in its own right.