- Artist
- Kitagawa Utamaro
- Year
- c. 1793
- Medium
- Woodblock print (nishiki-e)
Kitagawa Utamaro’s Three Beauties of the Present Day, printed around 1793, presents three women celebrated in the pleasure quarters of Edo: the geisha Toyohina and the famous tea-house waitresses Naniwaya Okita and Takashima Ohisa. The composition isolates each beauty with a different background pattern, drawing attention to their distinctive features and costumes. Utamaro’s subtle characterization and his sensitivity to the female form made him the supreme master of the bijin-ga, the ukiyo-e genre of beautiful women.