The Four Elegant Pastimes: Amusements in a Chinese pavilion

Kiyohara Yukinobu, the most accomplished female painter of the Edo period, takes a traditionally male subject--the four elegant pastimes of music, the board game of go, painting and calligraphy--and turns it into a woman's world; only the game-players are male. Men seem marginalized in this view of an idyllic Chinese setting. Refined brushwork, meticulous detail and an elegant figure style are typical of her work. Yukinobu was well connected in the Edo art world; her father was the artist Kusumi Morikage, and her mother the niece of Kano Tan'yu.