The Courtesan Wakaume of the Tama Establishment with Two Attendants, from a series of Portraits of Courtesans with Kyoka Verse

The Courtesan Wakaume of the Tama Establishment with Two Attendants, from a series of Portraits of Courtesans with Kyoka Verse

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Kitagawa Utamaro

This color woodcut depicts bijin, a Japanese word that means “beautiful person” but is customarily used to describe women. Bijin were popular subjects in Japanese prints during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Woodcuts of bijin typically feature women wearing beautifully patterned kimonos and elegant hairstyles. The colorful woodcuts glamorize these women’s lives and their profession as commercialized sex workers, bound by contract to licensed brothels and trained from a young age to please and entertain patrons. Like the theatres and pleasure districts of Japan’s early modern cities, prints of celebrity actors and courtesans indulged viewers’ fantasies of glamour and desire.
Artist
Kitagawa Utamaro
(Japanese, 1754 - 1806)
Title
The Courtesan Wakaume of the Tama Establishment with Two Attendants, from a series of Portraits of Courtesans with Kyoka Verse
Date
ca. 1793
Medium
Color woodcut
Dimensions
365 x 242 mm Overall
Credit
Bequest of John H. Van Vleck
Accession No.
1980.3213
Classification
Prints
Geography
Japan

Related

1926, sold by Ernest Le Veel (Paris, France) to Edward Burr Van Vleck (Madison, WI); 1943, passed through inheritance to Edward’s son, John H. Van Vleck (Madison, WI); 9 January 1980, bequeathed by John H. Van Vleck to the Elvehjem Museum of Art [now called Chazen Museum of Art]

  • Collia-Suzuki, Gina. "The Complete Woodblock Prints of Kitagawa Utamaro: a Descriptive Catalogue." Weston-super-Mare: Nezu Press, 2009. p. 293, cat. no. 229.4
  • Elvehjem Museum of Art. "The Edward Burr Van Vleck Collection of Japanese Prints." Madison: Elvehjem Museum of Art, 1990. p. 335

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