Kaigetsudo Ando (1677-1752) | Standing beauty with dragon and cloud pattern robe | Edo period, 18th century

Images du temps qui pass: Peinture et estampes d'ukiyo-e (Paris, 1966).

Edo Bijutsu no shukusai [The Festival of Art in the Edo Period] (Tokyo, 1989), p. 28, pl. 19.

Nikuhitsu ukiyo-e meihin-ten [Masterpieces of Ukiyo-e Paintings] (Tokyo, 1998), pl. 3.

Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris, Images du temps qui pass: Peinture et estampes d'ukiyo-e, 1 June 1966 - 3 October 1966.

Tokyo Metropolitan Teien Art Museum, Tokyo, Edo Bijutsu no shukusai [The Festival of Art in the Edo Period], 15 August 1989 - 4 November 1989.

Matsuzakaya Department Store, Ueno, Tokyo, Nikuhitsu ukiyo-e meihin-ten [Masterpieces of Ukiyo-e Paintings], 16 April 1998 - 21 April 1998.

A courtesan coquettishly holds the corner of a fukusa [cloth wrapper] inscribed with a poem in her mouth. She stands tall and statuesque, the lower hem of her robe suggestively lifted to expose her bare foot. Unique among Ando’s known and extant oeuvre, the courtesan’s kimono is boldly patterned with an ascending three-clawed dragon among cloud swirls in monochrome ink and wash, delineated in gently modulating brushwork. 

Kaigetsudo Ando was the founder of the eponymous Kaigetsudo [lit. Yearning for the Moon Studio] of artists that produced woodblock prints and paintings in the ukiyo-e [lit. pictures of the floating world] style of the high-ranking women of the demimonde. Based in the Suwa-cho district of Asakusa near Edo’s pleasure quarters, the Yoshiwara, the studio’s paintings are typified by portraits of anonymous courtesans against plain backgrounds; calligraphic lines describe the drapery and folds, while more delicate lines depict the facial features, hair, hands and bare feet.

Recent research has revealed Ando’s active years to be much longer than previously assumed. He lived from 1677 to 1752, and is now known to be one and the same as Shimura Josen, a haiku poet. He was exiled from Edo due to the Ejima-Ikushima Affair in 1714; this was a scandal in which Lady Ejima, a high-ranking member of the Tokugawa shogun’s harem (ooku), invited a kabuki actor to a teahouse and thereby missed her curfew at Edo Castle, leading to the punishment of some 1400 people. Ando was “collateral damage” in this scandal and was exiled to the island of Oshima off of Izu Province. Even though Ando was eventually allowed to return to Edo in 1722, in early ukiyo-e histories it was not clear whether or not he was active as a painter after his return.

For another example of a standing courtesan by Kaigetsudo Ando in the collection of the Tokyo National Museum, object number A-812, go to:

https://colbase.nich.go.jp/collection_items/tnm/A-812?locale=ja

For a further example in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (The MET), accession number 2015.300.118, go to: 

https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/53443

A similar pose of a courtesan with a fukusa can be seen in a woodblock print by one of the studio’s artists, Kaigetsudo Anchi (active circa 1700-1716), in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, accession number 11.13158, go to:

https://collections.mfa.org/objects/205809