Women Playing Music

A nineteenth-century print in the Metropolitan Museum of Art's collection, catalogued only by the general date 'nineteenth century' under Shigenobu's name, this design depicts women playing music — likely a small group of geisha or other professional performers with shamisen, koto, or related instruments. Music-making was a stock bijin-ga subject, and women rendered in performance allowed the artist to combine fashionable kimono pattern with the curving postures of musicianship — the angle of the head bent over a shamisen, the long extended line of the arm pulling the koto's bridge, the seated tuck of legs beneath an elaborate trailing kimono. The Met's record does not narrow the date further, but the design is consistent with Shigenobu's mature surimono and identifying-portrait work of the 1820s, when grouped figure compositions of Osaka and Edo professional performers were a recurring subject in his output. The print is rendered with the elongated facial type and patterned textile treatment characteristic of his school, and the Met preserves the impression as part of its broader holdings of Hokusai-circle prints.