Untitled

This untitled print, held by the Victoria and Albert Museum, is one of several works by Toyoharu in the museum's holdings that survive without secure original titles. Attributions of untitled sheets to Toyoharu rest typically on signature, seal, style of drawing, and the conventions of the format and series in which the print appears. Without a confirmed title or series identification, the safest description is a general one: the print is part of the museum's documented Toyoharu group, which spans his perspective subjects, his theatre and famous-place views, and his bijin-ga, and it can be approached as a representative example of his hand within whatever genre it belongs to. Such untitled sheets are an important reminder of how the Edo print market operated. Many prints were produced without elaborate titles or series identifications, especially as inexpensive single-sheet items, and their survival in major Western museum collections such as the V&A reflects nineteenth- and twentieth-century European collecting habits as much as it reflects what was originally most important within Edo itself.