Utagawa Kunisada and Keisai Eisen are artists often mentioned as excelling at bijin-ga, pictures of beautiful women, from the 1820s through the closing years of the Tokugawa Shogunate. Kuniyoshi’s bijin-ga have received less attention. His output in this genre was smaller than Kunisada’s, since he only begun having bij…in-ga published regularly from the 1830s, a decade after Kunisada entered the field. Nonetheless, 86 oban series of bijin-ga by Kuniyoshi are known to have survived. Kuniyoshi’s bijin-ga could be described as cheerful and healthy; many of his subjects are shown with smiles on their faces. He was extraordinarily able to capture women’s everyday, unassuming gestures and the the unaffected charm of the ordinary young woman and wives of the city. He not only incorporated touches elegantly invoking the four seasons in these prints but also used small cartouches and his highly stylish wit to give them an element of parody.
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