Three Courtesans with a Client

Held in the Cleveland Museum of Art and dated 1700-1720, this color woodblock print is a double-page book illustration that represents Masanobu's early Yoshiwara work, the formative years in which he was developing the figural and compositional vocabulary that would define his mature practice. The composition depicts an intimate Yoshiwara interior scene with three courtesans and a client, organized as two paired vignettes: on the left, a seated figure holds a pipe while a woman leans intimately from behind, and on the right, another woman plays a stringed instrument above a reclining figure. The composition descends from the iconographic tradition established by Torii Kiyonobu I's Illustrated Book of Courtesans, a key source for Masanobu's early figural manner, and demonstrates the close engagement Masanobu maintained with the Torii-school visual language even as he was developing his independent identity. The double-page book illustration format, with its origins in the ehon tradition founded by Hishikawa Moronobu, demonstrates Masanobu's continued participation in book illustration alongside his single-sheet print production. The print also documents the conceptual bridge between book illustration and single-sheet print that organized so much of early [ukiyo-e](/glossary/ukiyo-e) production, and that Masanobu, more than any other artist of his generation, would push toward the independent monumentality of the single sheet.