Kitagawa Utamaro (1754-1806)

Igo o kakomu go bijin (Five beauties playing go)

Details

Kitagawa Utamaro (1754-1806)
Igo o kakomu go bijin
(Five beauties playing go)
Two of the most popular beauties Ohisa and Okita playing the game of go, as three other beauties watch: from right to left, Tachibanaya Otatsu, Tomimoto Toyohina and Hiranoya Oseyo, signed Utamaro ga and published by Maruya Bunemon--very good impression, good color, centerfold, soiled, lightly backed, restorations, slightly stained
oban yoko-e: 24.2 x 36.9cm.

Lot Essay

Utamaro designed a number of prints of his favorite subjects, Okita and Ohisa, challenging each other to games of go, arm-wrestling or flower arranging. For another impression of this image with five kyoka (light-verse) poems on the beauties and the game of go in the Honolulu Academy of Arts, see Asano Shugo and Timothy Clark, The Passionate Art of Kitagawa Utamaro (Tokyo and London: Asahi Shimbunsha and Trustees of the British Museum, 1995), pl. 84.

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