The Sakuragawa Teahouse

The Sakuragawa Teahouse, circa 1777, is an oban color woodblock print held by the Art Institute of Chicago. The Sakuragawa was a celebrated teahouse in the licensed pleasure quarters or in the adjacent entertainment district, and prints of named teahouses functioned both as advertisements for the establishment and as portraits of the women employed there. The oban (large) format, by this date the standard for high-end bijin-ga, gave Shigemasa space to develop a more ambitious composition: the women of the teahouse arranged at scale, their dress and accessories rendered in detail, the establishment itself made identifiable to viewers familiar with the district. By the late 1770s, Shigemasa was at the height of his bijin-ga powers, having just completed the landmark Seiro Bijin Awase Sugata Kagami album of 1776 with Shunsho. The figural conventions in this teahouse print - tall, statuesque women with calm, dignified faces - belong to the same mature style that would shape Kiyonaga's and ultimately Utamaro's generation. The Art Institute of Chicago's impression preserves the rich color of mature nishiki-e printing.