The Pekingese

The Pekingese is a color woodblock print designed by Torii Kiyonaga in 1774, a charming early example of his Edo bijin-ga work for the Torii school of woodblock designers. The image presents a young woman in fashionable kimono attending to a small Chinese-style lapdog, the kind known in Edo as a chin and prized as a luxury pet among well-off townspeople and the Yoshiwara establishments. The juxtaposition of a beautifully dressed woman and a long-haired, snub-nosed dog allowed Kiyonaga to combine two ukiyo-e themes that delighted contemporary audiences: the formal elegance of a bijin and the affectionate, slightly comic detail of an animal companion. The Art Institute of Chicago, which holds this impression, dates the sheet to the productive mid-1770s, when Kiyonaga was absorbing the lyric manner of Suzuki Harunobu and Kitao Shigemasa while moving toward the taller, more substantial figure type that would soon define his mature work. Line is fine and elastic; color is gentle, with soft pinks, greens, and muted tans set against the patterned textile of the woman's robe. The composition is deliberately uncluttered, focusing attention on the small interaction between woman and dog. For modern viewers, the print preserves a domestic detail of Edo material culture—the imported lapdog as a marker of urban refinement—and shows Kiyonaga at the moment of finding his own balance between Harunobu's poetic intimacy and the public scale his bijin-ga would soon achieve.