Fun'ya no Yasuhide, from the series "Allegory of the Six Poets (Furyu rokkasen)"

Suzuki Harunobu's 'Fun'ya no Yasuhide,' from the series Allegory of the Six Poets (Furyu rokkasen), dates to about 1763 and is a typical example of how the artist used classical poetic frameworks as scaffolding for contemporary bijin-ga. Fun'ya no Yasuhide, one of the rokkasen, was praised in classical commentary for poems that combined verbal craft with vivid natural imagery. Rather than depicting the historical poet, Harunobu uses the title as an interpretive prompt: a contemporary Edo beauty stands in for the poet's spirit, the viewer mentally supplies the verse, and the print becomes a meeting place between the classical past and the urban present. The word furyu in the title flags this strategy: it announces that the series is 'in the fashionable mode,' adapted to the tastes of mid-eighteenth-century Edo. The Art Institute of Chicago, the museum source for this record, dates the impression to about 1763, on the threshold of the nishiki-e revolution of 1765 in which Suzuki Harunobu played such an influential role. The print's restrained palette and disciplined linework typify his pre-nishiki-e manner, but its conceptual program, the use of literary allegory to authorize images of contemporary beauty, is fully mature. For collectors, the sheet is a clean example of how Harunobu invented one of the most enduring formats of Edo bijin-ga: the classically titled, contemporarily dressed bijin print.