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Lot Essay
This is now considered the second state of the print with title and names of women removed, although Shibui Kiyoshi, in his study of Utamaro, contends that the first state is the version without annotation. For another example of the print presented here, see Julia Meech and Jane Oliver, Designed for Pleasure: The World of Edo Japan in Prints and Paintings, 1680-1860, exh. cat. (New York: Asia Society and Japanese Art Society of America in association with University of Washington Press, 2008), fig. 92. The exhibition label copy (published in Impressions, journal of the Japanese Art Society of America, no. 30 [2009]: 202) remarks on the curious physiognomy of the women here, who are identified in the titled state of the print as Takashima Ohisa, Naniwaya Okita and Tomimoto Toyohina, favored subjects of the artist:
This triangular composition seems to equate the renowed trio of Edo beauties with images of the Buddha and his acolytes Fugen and Monju and other classic triads. Although the celebrities are each identified by a crest, the markers normally associated with the respective women appear to have been transposed by the engraver by mistake. The high-bridged nose of the face in the bottom right usually appears on images of Tomimoto Toyohina, but she was not associated with the Naniwaya teahouse as the fan bearing its crest suggests. The regular features of the woman in the center seem reminiscent of Ohisa, but she is not known to have studied ballad chanting as the primula crest of the Tomimoto school on her sleeve intimates. The woman at the bottom left looks more like Okita, although the shoulder of her robe has the triple oak-leaf crest of the cracker shop where Ohisa presided.
This triangular composition seems to equate the renowed trio of Edo beauties with images of the Buddha and his acolytes Fugen and Monju and other classic triads. Although the celebrities are each identified by a crest, the markers normally associated with the respective women appear to have been transposed by the engraver by mistake. The high-bridged nose of the face in the bottom right usually appears on images of Tomimoto Toyohina, but she was not associated with the Naniwaya teahouse as the fan bearing its crest suggests. The regular features of the woman in the center seem reminiscent of Ohisa, but she is not known to have studied ballad chanting as the primula crest of the Tomimoto school on her sleeve intimates. The woman at the bottom left looks more like Okita, although the shoulder of her robe has the triple oak-leaf crest of the cracker shop where Ohisa presided.