Three Women after a Bath, from the series "A Brocade of Eastern Manners (Fuzoku Azuma no nishiki)"

Three Women after a Bath, 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 figures became the standard of Edo bijin-ga in the late eighteenth century. The print depicts three women in the aftermath of bathing - hair freshly washed, kimono only loosely tied, towels and combs nearby - in a scene that belongs to a long tradition of bijin-ga showing women at intimate stages of their toilette. Kiyonaga uses the relaxed post-bath setting to allow the figures' bodies and dress to soften and open, dispensing with the elaborate outer kimono of his more formal multi-figure prints. The keyblock describes the lines of unpinned hair, the fall of cotton yukata, and the small implements of personal care, while the nishiki-e palette is kept light, with pinks, pale blues, and warm flesh tones predominating. As fourth head of the Torii school, Kiyonaga's training had emphasized clarity of contour above all, and that skill governs the print: the bodies are firmly drawn even at their most informal. The Fuzoku Azuma no nishiki series surveys the manners and customs of women in the eastern capital, and this print belongs to its more domestic register, where the household interior is as important a setting as the street. The print is preserved at the Art Institute of Chicago, whose impression contributes to the museum's research on Kiyonaga's exploration of women's private life as a legitimate subject for Edo bijin-ga.