The Fourth Month, A Lady of the Enkyō Era (1744-48), from the series Thirty-six Elegant Selections
- Date:
- 1894
- Medium:
- Woodblock print, ink and color on paper
- Source:
- Cleveland Museum of Art
The Fourth Month, A Lady of the Enkyo Era (1744-48) is a Meiji woodblock print by Mizuno Toshikata, completed in 1894 as part of the series Thirty-six Elegant Selections (Sanjuroku kasen). The impression in the Cleveland Museum of Art (accession number 2017.72) belongs to a series in which Toshikata revisited the costume, manners, and seasonal customs of women from thirty-six successive historical periods, each sheet identified by era and month. The Fourth Month corresponds to early summer in the lunar calendar, and the print shows a woman of the mid-eighteenth-century Enkyo era in seasonally appropriate dress. Toshikata, a leading pupil of Tsukioka Yoshitoshi, was among the most accomplished bijin-ga designers of the Meiji period, and this series displays the disciplined drawing and historicist sensibility that made his work prized by Tokyo collectors. The composition concentrates on the figure herself, with carefully observed details of hair ornaments, kimono pattern, and posture meant to evoke an exact moment in fashion history. As a Meiji woodblock print, the image participates in a broader late-nineteenth-century interest in reconstructing the Edo past for modern audiences, an impulse shared with kabuki revivals and historical novels of the same decades. Color is applied in flat, restrained registers, and the keyblock outlines maintain the crispness that defined Toshikata's mature style. The series is documented across major collections of Meiji prints, including those at the Cleveland Museum of Art and the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, where it is recognized as a high point of late bijin-ga production.
The Fourth Month, A Lady of the Enkyō Era (1744-48), from the series Thirty-six Elegant Selections was created by Mizuno Toshikata (水野年方) in 1894.
