Model Young Women Woven in Mist
About This Series
Kitagawa Utamaro's "Model Young Women Woven in Mist" (Kasumi-ori musume hinagata) is one of the artist's bijin-ga cycles organized around a poetic conceit drawn from textile imagery. Kasumi-ori, the term for a finely woven gauze with patterns suggesting drifting mist, provided Utamaro with a metaphor for the half-glimpsed character of young women on the threshold of adult life, and the title's framing of the roster as a catalogue of hinagata, or pattern models, situates the series within the textile-pattern publication culture of late Edo Japan. The cycle is generally dated to the mid-to-late 1790s and was published by one of Utamaro's regular publishers, and the sheets present musume, the unmarried young women of the merchant and artisan classes, rather than the courtesans of the Yoshiwara. The format is oban tate-e and the figures are drawn in the okubi-e half-length mode that Utamaro had pioneered in the early 1790s, with each musume placed against a plain or mica ground that concentrates attention on the modulation of facial expression and the patterned robe. The cartouche identifies each figure by name or by social type, and the costume motifs carry the seasonal and identifying cues that an informed contemporary viewer would have decoded. The series participates in Utamaro's broader engagement with the social spectrum of Edo women beyond the licensed quarter, extending his bijin-ga production into the domain of respectable young womanhood. 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.
Prints in This Series (2)
Frequently Asked Questions
Kitagawa Utamaro's "Model Young Women Woven in Mist" (Kasumi-ori musume hinagata) is one of the artist's bijin-ga cycles organized around a poetic conceit drawn from textile imagery. Kasumi-ori, the term for a finely woven gauze with patterns suggesting drifting mist, provided Utamaro with a metaphor for the half-glimpsed character of young women on the threshold of adult life, and the title's framing of the roster as a catalogue of hinagata, or pattern models, situates the series within the textile-pattern publication culture of late Edo Japan. The cycle is generally dated to the mid-to-late 1790s and was published by one of Utamaro's regular publishers, and the sheets present musume, the unmarried young women of the merchant and artisan classes, rather than the courtesans of the Yoshiwara. The format is oban tate-e and the figures are drawn in the okubi-e half-length mode that Utamaro had pioneered in the early 1790s, with each musume placed against a plain or mica ground that concentrates attention on the modulation of facial expression and the patterned robe. The cartouche identifies each figure by name or by social type, and the costume motifs carry the seasonal and identifying cues that an informed contemporary viewer would have decoded. The series participates in Utamaro's broader engagement with the social spectrum of Edo women beyond the licensed quarter, extending his bijin-ga production into the domain of respectable young womanhood. 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.
The Model Young Women Woven in Mist series contains 1 prints, created by Kitagawa Utamaro.
The Model Young Women Woven in Mist series was created by Kitagawa Utamaro (喜多川歌麿).
We currently have 2 of 1 known prints from the Model Young Women Woven in Mist series indexed in our collection. Browse them all on this page.
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