A Lady with Three Servants, from the series "A Brocade of Eastern Manners (Fuzoku Azuma no nishiki)"

A Lady with Three Servants, from the series A Brocade of Eastern Manners (Fuzoku Azuma no nishiki), is a 1778 woodblock print by Torii Kiyonaga, the Torii school master whose mature designs reshaped Edo bijin-ga. The series, whose title plays on nishiki - the brocaded silks of upper-class dress and the nishiki-e color printing in which it is realized - surveys the manners, costumes, and customs of women in the eastern capital of Edo. In this sheet, Kiyonaga depicts a lady of evident rank attended by three female servants, the disparity in status laid out through clothing, height, and the careful arrangement of distance between figures. The mistress, taller and dressed in the most lavishly patterned outer kimono, holds her place at the visual center; her attendants frame her with smaller, more subdued robes and the practical postures of service. The composition shows Kiyonaga's growing ability to organize multi-figure groups into a coherent ensemble, a skill that he would soon apply to the multi-sheet prints of the 1780s. His Torii school training in clear contour drawing is everywhere apparent in the firm, unbroken outlines of the figures. The print is preserved at the Art Institute of Chicago, whose impression of the series provides scholars with one of the more complete records of this signature project. It illustrates how Kiyonaga used Edo bijin-ga not only to display beauty but also to map the social structure of the city's domestic world.