• <i>A Collection of Beautiful Women: The Pride of Edo</i> — 江戸自慢美人揃
<i>A Collection of Beautiful Women: The Pride of Edo</i> — 江戸自慢美人揃
<i>A Collection of Beautiful Women: The Pride of Edo</i> — 江戸自慢美人揃
<i>A Collection of Beautiful Women: The Pride of Edo</i> — 江戸自慢美人揃

Utagawa Sadakage (歌川貞景) (artist )

A Collection of Beautiful Women: The Pride of Edo — 江戸自慢美人揃

Print


ca 1830
30 in x 14.5 in (Overall dimensions) color woodblock
Signed: Gokotei Sadakage ga - on the right and middle panels
五湖亭貞景画
Signed: Sadakage ga - on the left panel (貞景画)
Publisher: Tsuruya Kiemon (Marks 553 - seal 22-066)
Censor seal: kiwame
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Keio University Three Edo beauties relaxing; one feeding her child, one adjusting her coiffure and one holding a very comfortable pet cat which is lying on a volume of 'The Tale of Genji'. This series of massive figure compositions were among the most dramatic bijinga designs of the early 19th century.

The series is extremely rare and is seldom if ever to be found with fine matching colors as here.

The woman on the left is the only one who has blackened her teeth, a fashion statement. The child she is breast feeding is wearing a kimono decorated with blue and 'gold' bats, a propitious symbol. She is supporting him with her left hand while holding his toy, a kind of rattle, with her right. Behind her, outside the screen is a pot holding a fukujusō or Adonis flower that is a symbol of the New Year or golden riches. There is also a flowering prunus, a symbol of spring. Irises also appear on the right-hand panel, another flower which blooms early in the year. The woman with the cat on the right is wearing what appears to be a black obi decorated with a waterwheel with waves. Because of the black ground it appears to look somewhat like a star chart before a more careful examination.

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The significance of the fukujusō (福寿草)

The women are wearing heavy robes and the woman in the center and the right are also warmed by a heavy quilt placed over an unseen kotatsu (炬燵) or frame which protects them from a charcoal brazier. The season is winter, but we can get closer to the actually date - found in the Japanese calendar - which must be at New Year's or within a few days after that.

Roger Keyes wrote of a different surimono in the Chester Beatty Library: "Fukujusō, or adonis, grew wild in the vicinity of Edo and blossomed naturally during the third or fourth month of the lunar year. It was cultivated, however, for sale and enjoyment at the New Year and was so common then that it was often called ganjitsusō, 'Flower of New Year's Day'. The poisonous root of the plant was used as a cardiac stimulant and this may have been one reason why it was called fukujusō, 'the plant of happiness and longevity'."
beautiful women (bijin-ga - 美人画) (genre)
Tsuruya Kiemon (鶴屋喜右衛門) (publisher)
boshi-e (母子絵) (genre)