Three Types of Chrysanthemums

Three Types of Chrysanthemums, produced in 1785, is a refined example of Kitao Shigemasa's engagement with kachō-e, the genre of bird and flower imagery within Edo [ukiyo-e](/glossary/ukiyo-e). The work is held in the Art Institute of Chicago and shows three distinct varieties of chrysanthemum, each rendered with attention to its particular blossom form, leaf shape, and stem habit. The chrysanthemum was a symbol with deep classical resonance in Japan, associated with the autumn season, the imperial household, and a long tradition of poetic reflection on transience and refinement. By depicting three cultivars side by side, Shigemasa nods to the popular Edo practice of chrysanthemum appreciation, in which collectors and amateur growers prized new and unusual varieties and competed at seasonal exhibitions. As founder of the Kitao school, Shigemasa was well placed to bridge the world of educated horticultural amateurs and the broader audience for printed images, and his botanical compositions tend to be clear, well organized, and faithful to observed plant structure while still composed with strong design instincts. The Art Institute of Chicago's holding of this print places it within a larger collection of late eighteenth-century kachō-e that documents the breadth of subjects available to Edo print buyers. Within Shigemasa's career, Three Types of Chrysanthemums shows him operating outside the more famous arenas of bijinga and [yakusha-e](/glossary/yakusha-e), demonstrating the Kitao school's flexibility and the artist's enduring interest in the elegant juxtaposition of natural forms. The print also stands as an early node in a long line of chrysanthemum imagery in Japanese ukiyo-e that would extend through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.