Seiro Bijin Awase Sugata Kagami. Three Volumes.

1858. SHIGEMASA, Kitao and Katsukawa SHUNSHO. Seiro Bijin Awase Sugata Kagami. Three volumes. Xylographically printed and illustrated throughout, including mostly double-page woodcut illustrations. 4to., 175 x 280 mm, bound alike in original gray-green wrappers in glassine, sewn Japanese-style, together in a new patterned silk chitsu box. Tokyo: Yamakazi Kinbei and Tsutaya Juzaburo, 1858. Later edition of one of "the finest of all [Japanese] colour-printed picture-books" (Hillier). A Mirror of the Forms of Rival Beauties of the Green Houses is a behind-the-scenes study of geisha life, the "crowning achievement in books" of ukiyo-e artists Shigemasa (1739-1820) and Shunsho (1726-1793). Best known for geisha paintings, haikai (poetry), and shodo (calligraphy), Shigemasa primarily created books, though he did produce separate prints. He may have been a pupil of Nishimura Shigenaga but little else is known about his education. Katsukawa Shunsho, Shigemasa's collaborator, was "one of the unquestionably great masters of Ukiyo-e, outstanding as painter and print-designer" (ibid). A student of Miyagawa Shunsui (also known as Katsukawa), Shunsho founded his own eponymous sub-school. This three-volume set, first published in 1776, is divided by season: spring and summer in vol. 1, autumn and winter in vol. 2. The third volume contains mostly odes on the four seasons, composed "by the women represented in the illustrations" (Toda) who are named in the text. The illustrations in all three volumes show elegantly dressed geishas passing time reading, arranging flowers, keeping pets, playing games, and fingering musical instruments. These mundane daytime activities -- depicted without any hint of the professional nightlife to follow -- are printed using "the most gorgeous harmonies of colour yet achieved in woodblock colour-printing" (Hillier), sometimes heightened in silver mica. Based on the painting styles, Shigemasa is credited with the spring and autumn pictures, while the summer and winter pictures are attributed to Shunsho (Toda). Hillier notes the overall consistent quality of the prints, calling this work "among the highest achievements of the Japanese in book form." Hillier, The Art of the Japanese Book (1987), pp. 22, 30, 331, 348, 352-357, 366. Toda, Descriptive Catalogue of Japanese and Chinese Illustrated Books (2004), 180-181 (first edition).