After A Bath — 湯上がり

"After A Bath" (湯上がり, yuagari, 1898) depicts a woman immediately after bathing — a subject with deep roots in the bijin-ga tradition that Shuntei approaches with his characteristic combination of sensuous awareness and formal restraint. The post-bath figure, her hair still damp, her skin flushed with the heat of the water, her kimono loosely arranged, was a standard subject in Japanese figure prints because it allowed the representation of a woman in a state of physical relaxation and undress without requiring any explicit erotic framing. Shuntei renders the specific condition of post-bath warmth and physical ease.