Illustration of English People (Igirisujin no zu)

This Yokohama-e woodblock print, signed Ichiryūsai Yoshitoyo and dated to the first month of 1861, is titled "Illustration of English People" (Igirisujin no zu, 英吉利人の図) and depicts British residents at the Yokohama treaty port. The Metropolitan Museum of Art holds the sheet under accession number 2007.49.247; it is printed in ink and color on paper at ōban dimensions of roughly 35.2 by 24.4 cm. By the first month of 1861 the Yokohama settlement had been in operation for a year and a half, and Edo publishers had developed a recognizable Yokohama-e formula: a foreigner identified by a national cartouche, often accompanied by a wife or a servant, in costume and pose recognisable as that nationality, set against an evocative architectural or maritime backdrop. Yoshitoyo's "Illustration of English People" is a representative example of this mature Yokohama-e formula at its first peak. The Art Institute of Chicago holds a closely related Yoshitoyo print of the same year and theme under accession number 1926.1628, and the two together represent the wider Yoshitoyo treatment of British and Dutch subjects during the most active phase of the Yokohama-e genre. The Metropolitan's sheet is preserved in its collection of late-Edo Yokohama-period prints and is precisely datable thanks to the Tokugawa censorship date seal.