Guide to Contemporary Styles
About This Series
Kitagawa Utamaro's "Guide to Contemporary Styles" (Toji zensei bijin zoroe, or in alternative readings Toji bijin awase) belongs to the bijin awase tradition of comparative beauty rosters that organized much of his mature production. The series, generally dated to the mid-1790s and issued by one of his regular publishers in the Tsutaya circle, gathers a roster of leading courtesans and teahouse beauties under a title that frames the project as a survey of present-day fashion. The sheets are issued in oban tate-e format and depict each figure at half-length or three-quarter length in the okubi-e mode, the format Utamaro had pioneered in the early 1790s to allow the courtesan or beauty to be presented at near-life scale against a plain or mica-coated ground. Each sheet bears a cartouche identifying the figure by name and by house or affiliation, and the costume is patterned with the seasonal motifs and identifying devices that the informed viewer would read for their references to specific establishments. The series operates as both an aesthetic statement and a fashion catalogue, signalling to a contemporary audience which beauties were ascendant in the current moment and which costume conventions defined the licensed quarter's style. Utamaro's contribution to the format was to invest each named figure with the psychological precision of the okubi-e portrait, distinguishing his contemporary-style rosters from the more schematic bijin awase compilations of his predecessors. Impressions are catalogued among the Utamaro holdings of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, the British Museum, the Tokyo National Museum, and the Chiba City Museum of Art, and the series figures in standard cataloguings of his Tsutaya-era and immediately post-Tsutaya production at the height of his career.
Prints in This Series (2)
Frequently Asked Questions
Kitagawa Utamaro's "Guide to Contemporary Styles" (Toji zensei bijin zoroe, or in alternative readings Toji bijin awase) belongs to the bijin awase tradition of comparative beauty rosters that organized much of his mature production. The series, generally dated to the mid-1790s and issued by one of his regular publishers in the Tsutaya circle, gathers a roster of leading courtesans and teahouse beauties under a title that frames the project as a survey of present-day fashion. The sheets are issued in oban tate-e format and depict each figure at half-length or three-quarter length in the okubi-e mode, the format Utamaro had pioneered in the early 1790s to allow the courtesan or beauty to be presented at near-life scale against a plain or mica-coated ground. Each sheet bears a cartouche identifying the figure by name and by house or affiliation, and the costume is patterned with the seasonal motifs and identifying devices that the informed viewer would read for their references to specific establishments. The series operates as both an aesthetic statement and a fashion catalogue, signalling to a contemporary audience which beauties were ascendant in the current moment and which costume conventions defined the licensed quarter's style. Utamaro's contribution to the format was to invest each named figure with the psychological precision of the okubi-e portrait, distinguishing his contemporary-style rosters from the more schematic bijin awase compilations of his predecessors. Impressions are catalogued among the Utamaro holdings of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, the British Museum, the Tokyo National Museum, and the Chiba City Museum of Art, and the series figures in standard cataloguings of his Tsutaya-era and immediately post-Tsutaya production at the height of his career.
The Guide to Contemporary Styles series contains 1 prints, created by Kitagawa Utamaro.
The Guide to Contemporary Styles series was created by Kitagawa Utamaro (喜多川歌麿).
We currently have 2 of 1 known prints from the Guide to Contemporary Styles series indexed in our collection. Browse them all on this page.
Want to rate prints from Guide to Contemporary Styles?
Sign up to start rating