Two Men Wearing Yellow Coats and Straw Hats with Red Bows

Yashima Gakutei created this striking double portrait of two men wearing yellow coats and broad straw hats with red bows in 1840, when his career as a leading surimono designer was reaching its mature phase. The Metropolitan Museum of Art preserves the print, which captures the artist's signature ability to translate everyday figures into highly designed compositions tailored for private circulation among connoisseurs.

The two figures stand close together, their wide-brimmed sugegasa straw hats overlapping in a way that draws attention to the bright vermillion bows knotted beneath their chins. Their saffron-yellow coats fall in crisp, broadly cut folds that flatten the figures into bold silhouettes, an effect Gakutei sharpens with delicate outline work in sumi ink. The restricted palette of yellow, red, and ink black recalls the disciplined color sense that distinguishes surimono from the more flamboyant commercial nishiki-e of the same period.