Settsu Province from the series Fashionable Six Jewel Rivers (Furyu Mu Tamagawa)

Settsu Province from Kitagawa Utamaro's series Fashionable Six Jewel Rivers (Furyu Mu Tamagawa), dated about 1795 and held by the Cleveland Museum of Art, belongs to one of the artist's most ambitious mitate cycles. The Six Tamagawa, six famous rivers each called Tamagawa in different provinces, were a stock subject of classical poetry; in Utamaro's hands they become a sequence of Edo bijin-ga set beside flowing water, each river evoked through elegant women rather than landscape. The Settsu sheet shows fashionable contemporaries arranged near the river, their robes patterned with motifs that echo the locale while their poses follow the conventions of late eighteenth-century ukiyo-e. Utamaro's drawing is at its most refined here: long, almost calligraphic lines define the necks and sleeves, while the printers exploit subtle bokashi gradations in indigo and gray to suggest moving water. The artist's signature delicate handling of facial features, with small mouths and long, slightly arched brows, gives the women a serenity that complements the literary conceit. For collectors of Kitagawa Utamaro and of Edo bijin-ga, the Furyu Mu Tamagawa series is a key example of how ukiyo-e absorbed classical waka tradition into the world of fashion and commerce. The Cleveland Museum of Art preserves this Settsu impression as part of a strong holding from the cycle, allowing study of the way Utamaro recoded a poetic geography into a portrait of stylish, idealized Edo womanhood.