Flowers of Yamashita (Yamashita hana), from the series "Contest of Contemporary Beauties (Tosei bijin iro kurabe)"
- Date:
- late 1780s
- Medium:
- Color woodblock print; oban
- Source:
- Art Institute of Chicago
Flowers of Yamashita (Yamashita hana), from the series Contest of Contemporary Beauties (Tosei bijin iro kurabe), dated 1786 and held by the Art Institute of Chicago, is a mature Edo [ukiyo-e](/glossary/ukiyo-e) composition by Kitao Masanobu produced near the height of his career as a designer of [bijin-ga](/glossary/bijin-ga). The series title declares its conceit openly: a competitive arrangement, in the manner of the long-established meisho-zukushi and uta-awase formats, in which beauties drawn from distinct quarters and neighbourhoods of Edo are juxtaposed for comparison and connoisseurial delectation. Yamashita, the district at the foot of Ueno hill, was famous in the late eighteenth century for its teahouses and the attractive young women who served there, and Masanobu's print presents a representative beauty of that locality, her costume, hairstyle, and bearing carefully chosen to evoke her specific milieu. By 1786 Masanobu was an established figure in the Kitao school founded by his master Kitao Shigemasa, and the print displays the refined draughtsmanship, sophisticated colour separation, and confident handling of textile pattern that distinguished his work from that of his teacher. He was also by this date increasingly active as a writer under the pen name Santo Kyoden, and prints of this sort circulated alongside the kyoka anthologies and illustrated fiction in which he played a leading editorial role. The Art Institute of Chicago documents the work within its substantial Buckingham collection of Japanese woodblock prints.
Flowers of Yamashita (Yamashita hana), from the series "Contest of Contemporary Beauties (Tosei bijin iro kurabe)" was created by Kitao Masanobu (北尾政演) in late 1780s.
Flowers of Yamashita (Yamashita hana), from the series "Contest of Contemporary Beauties (Tosei bijin iro kurabe)" depicts birds & flowers.
