Reading a Letter in Front of a Screen, from an untitled series of 12 prints
c. 1710
Medium
Woodblock print; oban, sumizuri-e
Dimensions
35.6 × 25.4 cm (14 × 10 in.)
Classification
woodblock print
Department
Arts of Asia
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
19116
Art Historical Context
Step into the elegant world of early 18th-century Japan with *Reading a Letter in Front of a Screen*, a captivating woodblock print by Torii Kiyonobu I, created around 1710. As a key figure in the Torii school—pioneers of ukiyo-e, the "pictures of the floating world"—Kiyonobu specialized in vibrant depictions of kabuki actors and beautiful women (bijin-ga). This intimate scene, part of an untitled series of 12 prints, shows a graceful woman absorbed in a letter, framed by a decorative screen, evoking the quiet drama of everyday life in Edo (modern Tokyo). Crafted as an oban-sized sumizuri-e—a...
About the Artist
Torii Kiyonobu I · 1664–1729
Torii Kiyonobu I (1664–1729), born Shōbei in Osaka, was the second son of Torii Kiyomoto, a prominent kabuki actor specializing in onnagata roles and a painter of theater signboards. He studied painting under his father as well as Yoshida Hanbei and Hishikawa Moronobu, the pioneering ukiyo-e master whose figure styles profoundly shaped his early work. In 1687, at age twenty-four, Kiyonobu accompan...