Courtesan
1704
unspecified
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
About the artist
1704
unspecified
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
Courtesan is a 1704 unspecified by Kaigetsudō, a Baroque work, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
This painting shows a lone woman in a bright kimono, seated on a patterned mat. Her long sleeves stretch past her knees. The artist used ink and color in bold, flowing lines. The style was popular in Edo’s pleasure district. Artists painted courtesans in striking poses to highlight their beauty and status. Simple backgrounds push your eye right to her. See more of this artist’s work at the Cleveland Museum of Art.
Paintings of the courtesans who provided men with a sophisticated menu of appealing fashions, flattery, witty banter, music, dancing, and sexual services in the Yoshiwara district of the city of Edo (Tokyo) were the bread and butter of the Kaigetsudō studio, in whose style this work is painted. Their paintings emphasized bold, sweeping calligraphic ink lines in rendering the figures’ forms, along with high-contrast colors and patterns in their typically solitary subjects’ garments. Aside from the occasional prop or poem, the space around the dramatic figure was left entirely blank.
Read the full account in the museum source.
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