Description
Elegant woodblock print of vertical large oban (大判) format, made by the famous artist Kitagawa Utamaro (喜多川歌麿) and depicting Yosooi (粧ひ), a courtesan who has been the subject of numerous representations by many Japanese artists of the late 18th and early 19th centuries due to her extraordinary beauty, which made her the highest priced and highest ranked oiran (花魁) of her age.
In this print, taken from the series “Selections from Six Houses of the Yoshiwara” (青楼六家選), the woman, who worked at the prestigious Matsubaya (松葉屋) pleasure house, is depicted while writing a letter to a client.
The work, printed for the first time around 1801 by the publisher Omiya Gonkuro (近江屋権九郎), is presented here in a fine woodblock reproduction, in very good general condition, of the second half of the 20th century made by the carver Nagashima Michio (長島道男) and by the printer Irie Yoshimitsu (入江義光).
