Woman playing shamisen, from an untitled series of women at leisure

A chuban-format print from an untitled series of women at leisure, showing a young woman absorbed in playing the shamisen, the three-stringed lute that was the essential domestic instrument of the Edo pleasure quarters and merchant homes. The chuban size, smaller than the oban that dominated commercial printmaking, gives Toyohiro a more intimate compositional field, and he uses it to focus tightly on the woman's posture, the angle of her plectrum, and the fall of her kimono. Music-making was a standard accomplishment expected of geisha and courtesans, but it was equally a fixture of the lives of well-educated townswomen, and Toyohiro typically declines to specify the social register of his sitters, treating them with the same dignified attention regardless. The Art Institute of Chicago dates the impression to circa 1795-1800, placing the print at the heart of Toyohiro's mature bijin-ga period.